Petty Corruption, Development and Information Technology as an Antidote

Abstract

Petty corruption is normally understood to be corruption faced by citizens and the private sector on a daily basis to receive basic services such as connections to utilities, passports, admissions to school and dealing with trade-related customs’ formalities. As opposed to grand corruption that involves millions of dollars, petty corruption is largely ignored in corruption-related research. This is probably due to the belief that it does not affect development and the provision of infrastructure the way grand corruption does. The scant attention may also be driven by the view that if grand corruption is reduced this in turn would have a knock-on effect on petty corruption. As to whether this is the case is highly debatable. This paper focuses on petty corruption and argues that it also undermines development. It examines the use of information technology (IT) creatively to reduce opportunities for petty corruption using ‘Bhoomi’, a project devoted to the digitisation of land registration services in the state of Karnataka in India, as an illustration. On the basis of our analysis of a number of surveys of Bhoomi that have been carried out since its inception, this paper concludes that IT has the potential to introduce efficiency and transparency. However, this potential can only be realised when the ‘people’ component of the e-governance equation change their attitudes towards the soliciting, and giving, of bribes and public officials refrain from abusing their office.