Indian Official Puts Public Webcam in Government office

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Indian_anti-corruption_mov...

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill

In India, it is known that officials in the government slack during office hours. Delaying of process for unworthy reasons. Numerous time-breaks and other infinite 'small' but aggregatively deterrent forms of behaviours in the office.

The camera moves the whole system a step forward. Transparency is more easily perceivable to the public now. The necessity of a sting operation in the office does not emerge. People can have a fresh perspective on the laws for the government officials.

Psychologically, this might build a better work environment. It has been shown that adding monitoring video cameras does add a certain form of placebo effect.

I hope the 'mantra' should be improvement, no matter how small it is. A complete revamp of the system is more like dreaming about humans taking over all the nine(eight eh?) planets, and that too in an year.

This is almost certainly true, especially for major politicos. This is addressed later in the article in this snippet:

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said he applauded Mr. Chandy’s webcams, even if the effort amounted to no more than tokenism.

“This type of tokenism is also quite useful,” said Mr. Abraham, predicting it might check the behavior of not only the chief minister, but also his underlings and the powerful executives and politicians who come to visit him.

Of course, he noted, if people are intent on paying bribes, they could probably still do it outside the office.

Mr. Abraham said webcams might be a far more powerful tool if installed in police stations, drivers’ licenses offices, welfare agencies and other places where Indians interact with officials who sometimes demand bribes to do routine work.

The last paragraph is especially interesting, but it would never fly. There would be widespread opposition on flimsy grounds, and even if it were implemented, the webcams would magically malfunction for no apparent reason.

Every single government-run agency I've been to for any sort of work, or any run-in with the cops - I've paid a bribe.

Drivers' license, certificate of domicile, Certificate of marriage, Passport office, Train ticket inspector, Stopped by cops on road. Each case has its own story about how I was being yanked around by the players in question, and a not-subtle-at-all culmination in how they'd essentially just stick their hands out and say, "You know what to do.".

I would think that a reasonable way to combat this is to just pay these officials well, but I'm not sure that carries any conviction any more. It's a sadly endemic evil that will only be tackled with a widespread name-and-shame campaign (the likes of http://www.ipaidabribe.com).

Actually, you do. Numerous undercover TV news stories like on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline, as well as police sting operations, show exactly that.

Another huge counterexample to the "you don't get bribes in the office, in a clear, visible way" is the case of Peruvian President's right-hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos, who secretly video-taped himself paying hundreds of MILLIONS in bribes in his office:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vladimiro_Montesin...

We are indeed talking about about briefcases full of cash, containing hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and counting them out on a table in his office. Imagine what he would have paid for a product like Deniable Video,

https://deniablevideo.com/

so that he could keep his transactions secret. This is opposite to the Indian official's objective, who wants openness, but my point is that big bribes--at least sometimes--work exactly the way that you say they don't.

Even if it is for the image of the official, it's a good start, if you don't agree at least give another solution, or stop being critical.

Are you seriously using the possible threat of lost jobs as a foundation for this argument?

Black money is not going into renewable energy, medical research, startup funding, education and so on. It is going into real estate, government tenders and so on.