Calling In Against Corruption
A Pakistani official set out to prevent bureaucrats from demanding bribes for providing basic public services. The solution: citizen feedback through mobile phones.
This article is an abridged version of a longer historical case studyproduced by Innovations for Successful Societies, a research program at Princeton University.
BY JUNE 30, 2015
In early 2008, an irate government official walked into the office of Zubair Bhatti, the district coordination officer (DCO) of Jhang district, in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The official complained that, when he tried to register his property, the land registry employee had asked him for a bribe. Bhatti immediately conducted a surprise inspection of the district registry and launched a formal corruption investigation into the behavior of the accused employee. But he worried that few of Jhang’s 3.3 million residents were lucky enough to have the DCO intercede on their behalf when facing such demands from bureaucrats.
