I woke up to the cover story in Bangalore Mirror about two citizen empowerment (!) initiatives, this morning – ‘You paid bribe? Tell the whole world‘ and ‘Auto driver misbehaving? Get on FB‘.
One was http://www.ipaidabribe.com/, an initiative by Janaagraha and, as the name makes it amply clear, it asks people to report a bribe they have paid or have been sought.
The second is by a Bangalorean Nikhil Narayanan (one of the better known Nikhil Narayanan just confirmed it was not by him, but another by the same name!). Called Rage Against The Rickshaws, this is a well-meaning effort on Facebook that aims to get people to share proof of errant auto drivers in Bangalore. Nikhil, in his Bangalore Mirror interview says that he will try and ensure that the list reaches the right authorities for further action.
These are two more initiatives in the line of the earlier, much talked about initiative by Delhi Traffic Police, where they, under the garb of the difficulty of managing traffic during the Commonwealth Games (as per the bio!), ask people to join the effort and report traffic violations.
While I think this is an interesting evolution in the use of social media, there is a fundamental flaw in this approach.
Using social media (a one-to-many/ many-to-many communication mode) for opining on things is vastly different from pointing the finger at someone breaking the law. A film, or a piece of music or a program on television will evoke diverse opinions and social media is indeed used to share, opine and debate such views. But they are merely opinions.
Using social media for squealing (I couldn’t find a better word – sorry) on others is definitely not something our society needs.
Think about it!
A crime or something that is against the rules/law, however small or big, needs to be reported in privacy, however intimidating our Police Stations are, to middle class Indians. Reason? A crime is not so, till it has been proven, or at least till both parties have been given a fair opportunity to explain their stand, to a neutral (at least that’s the objective) party like Police.
It could be bribes, traffic violation and errant auto drivers today. Tomorrow, it may be rape, burglary and homicide. I’m not referring to the seriousness of the crime – that is subjective and based on what the concerned people lost in the process, but the problem is that this is not even mob justice. This is simply mob injustice. The online medium is being used as an alternative to the elusive mass media (owned and managed by a few), which judges what kind of crimes should go on air. That subversion is both dangerous and frivolous.
Dangerous, because it is so open to misuse and eventually, counter-misuse. There is a reason why the crime reporting process is enabled by an other-wise fair and neutral law enforcement agency that has the power to investigate and take them to the next level, in terms of a lawsuit, civil or criminal. Taking it to the world, with just one side of the story, seems like a dangerous trend, to me, personally. Assuming we report an errant auto driver or a traffic offender, with or without material proof (photos, that can also be tampered with?), why should they be subject to online, public humiliation (albeit, massively limited public, given the poor state of internet penetration in India) before an investigation? Is it fair? And, doesn’t that open a can of worms of them countering the people who complained against them, in the same forum, with more proof? Do we need to wash dirty linen in the public for things that are best handled by the law?
Secondly, it is frivolous, because of the state of internet penetration in India. Regardless of all the reports and graphs that many have produced to showcase India’s growing (or stunted) internet penetration, it is at best an optimistic projection. 51 million or 71 million, it is still an incredibly tiny fraction. So, when it comes to attacking a segment that may not be adequately represented online or even have consistent access to internet, the effort seems massively unfair and one-sided.
Take auto drivers, for instance. The recent MeterJam initiative asked people to boycott autos for one day. And most auto drivers couldn’t care less and even came to know about it only via mainstream/mass media – not through word-of-mouth or the internet. The Rage Against The Rickshaws initiative too, however well-meaning, makes the assumption that the users of auto – that is, us – are the paragons of virtue and do no wrong when it comes to complaining…fairly…about auto drivers. That is a subjective discussion, I agree, but what if the list contains at least one wrong complain because some college going kid thought this is the right way to get back at an auto driver who spoke rudely to him?
These are at best assumptions and seem like I’m throwing a spanner in an otherwise progressive initiative, but the only issue there is that both the parties do not have the same platform to talk to each other. Posting complaints about a section of society that is not currently active online is akin to printing posters in high quality paper and pasting in places where they have conditional, selective access to enter.
Even otherwise, it is a dicey proposition at best because it is akin to, generally, printing posters of photos of traffic violators and pasting them wherever we feel like. Or standing in the middle of a busy traffic junction and shout to people who may care, with a hand-held loudspeaker. Just because they are being done with the written word, online, does not make them fair, right or meaningful.
I love the sense of empowerment to ordinary citizens in these initiatives and feel that people are taking to it only because it liberates them from going to otherwise intimidating and dingy police stations. Plus, of course, it gives them a chance to report violations that annoy them, when faced with them on the road. But taking them online, publicly, is not cooperating or participating with the law enforcement agencies, primarily because it is happening in the public. If there was a secure forum to air these views where reports and complaints are not exposed to public but only to those that need to/can investigate and take action, that seems like a fair option than this one. IPaidABribe, for instance, has an open list of all things posted by people – paid bribe, was asked a bribe, did not pay bribe and so on – are these being curated by someone who is responsible for verifying the authenticity of the claims? Why can’t someone who was haggling for a bribe with a government official for something illegal, use this forum to get back at that official? That would of course mean government agencies apply social CRM processes and ensure privacy to each complaint filed – not go entirely open like this and expose ‘alleged’ crimes, small or big, openly.
Moreover, in case of social CRM, the eventual advantage for the profit-oriented organization is increase in goodwill; by addressing complaints online, publicly, they are telling the world that they may address other customers too, in the same way. The law isn’t a customer facing, profit-making organization, unfortunately and there are individual people involved.
What is your take?