TIMES INSIGHT GROUP
New Delhi: Transparency measures like the Right To Information Act are intended to reduce levels of corruption, but is there any proof that this actually happens? Two field experiments in Delhi by Yale University researchers suggest that this might be true; transparency measures are as effective as bribes in ensuring service delivery and, furthermore, may even erase class differences.
Leonid V Peisakhin and Paul Pinto, two PhD candidates at Yale University’s department of political science, conducted a field experiment in a Delhi slum, the results of which were published in a recent paper. The subjects, all of whom were poor slumdwellers, did not have a ration card but wanted to apply for one. They were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups.
The first group applied for the ration card and then did nothing more about it, the second attached a letter of recommendation from an NGO to their ration card application, the third paid a bribe after putting in their application, and the fourth enquired about the status of their ration card application through an RTI request shortly after the initial application.
Peisakhin and Pinto found that the group that paid a bribe was by far the most successful, in that its application was processed faster. But interestingly, the group that put in an RTI request was almost as successful. Hardly anyone in the other two groups received their ration card during the 11-month study. Peisakhin conducted an extension of this study, and found that RTI requests helped underprivileged applicants get results almost as fast as the middle class.
India’s RTIA provides a free and effective alternative to bribery. More abstractly, the experimental results show that higher levels of transparency are indeed associated with greater levels of government efficiency and lower incidence of bribery (assuming that as people learn about the effectiveness of the RTIA, their willingness to offer bribes decreases), even in societies where there is a substantial power differential between government officials and the least privileged members of the public, says Peisakhin.
Peisakhin conducted an extension of this study, the results of which will be published in a forthcoming paper. In this study, shared with TOI, he divided his subjects into three groups the control group, those who paid a bribe and those who filed an RTI request — as they tried to get themselves registered as voters. This time around, Peisakhin conducted the experiment separately among middle class subjects and among the urban poor.
Power To The Poor
Slum-dwellers split into 4 groups. Each group applied for ration cards
First group applied and did nothing more, second attached recommendation from NGO, third paid bribe, fourth filed RTI request
shortly after application
Group that paid bribe got best results. But group that put in RTI request was almost as successful
Hardly anyone in other two groups
received ration card in 11 months RTI can benefit poor, erase class disadvantage
New Delhi: Two field experiments in Delhi by Yale University researchers may actually prove that measures like RTI Act can reduce corruption.
The study proved that yet again, while trying to register as voters, bribing was the most efficient technique, filing an RTI request too halved the median processing time. Most significantly, when poor subjects filed an RTI request, it erased the class disadvantage they otherwise faced, and their applications were cleared as fast as those of middle class subjects. On an average, middle class applicants faced fewer checks and were added to the electoral rolls much faster than their poorer counterparts.
Access to information appears to empower the poor to the point where they receive almost the same treatment as middleclass individuals at the hands of civil servants. This is something that payment of a bribe cannot do. This finding suggests that going forward, policy makers might want to use regulations that promote transparency to combat discrimination against the poor of society, says Peisakhin.
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