Potentialities and affordances of grassroots civic tech platforms as effective anti-corruption tools: Decoding the story of I Paid A Bribe, India

This chapter seeks to contribute to research on anti-corruption technologies by delving into Janaagraha’s I Paid A Bribe tech platform; and, more specifically, by investigating the role accorded to technology to enhance civic participation for the fight against corruption. In doing so, the chapter also contributes to corruption and anti-corruption research in a twofold manner: on the one hand by understanding the contribution of civil society organisations (CSOs) and their tech platforms to anti-corruption debates; on the other hand, by extending the growing vocab- ulary around civic tech to the study of anti-corruption tools and practices. The rest of the chapter is designed as follows: the next section gives an overview of corruption and civil society that provides the context in which IPAB operates. After that, I present the research design, outlining the data gathering process and data analysis method, and discuss the analytical framework of affordances, the most recurring theme derived from data analysis. To gain a comprehensive perspective on the issue, I focus on the following aspects: presenting the tech platform as designed by the developers; discussing the different types of affordances of the platform: those that the designers intended and one that users imagined; and, outlining the outcomes and challenges of IPAB, leading to its initial rapid growth and eventual suspension. A final section provides concluding remarks. Anwesha Chakraborty - 9781802202106 Downloaded from https://www.elgaronline.com/ at 08/25/2024 08:34:33PM via Open Access. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/