Little Brother is watching you. That is the premise for the webcam that a top government official has installed in his office, as an anticorruption experiment. Goings-on in his chamber are viewable to the public, 24/7.
In an India beset by kickback scandals at the highest reaches of government, and where petty bribes at police stations and motor vehicle departments are often considered a matter of course, Oommen Chandy is making an online stand.
“Instead of taking action against corruption, I believe we have to create an atmosphere where everything should be in a transparent way,” Chandy, who recently became chief minister of Kerala after his coalition won a close election, said in an interview in his office. “The people must know everything.”
About 100,000 visitors logged in to the video feed on the day it began, July 1. And through last Friday afternoon, it had been visited by 293,586 users.
Although the proceedings were being streamed on his office's website, as with everything captured by the webcam, there was no audio (the minister says he wants visitors and aides to speak freely when they meet him.)
Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said he applauded Chandy's webcams, even if the effort amounted to no more than tokenism. “This type of tokenism is also quite useful,” said Abraham, predicting it might check the behaviour of not only the chief minister, but also his underlings and the powerful executives and politicians who come to visit him.
Of course, he noted, if people are intent on paying bribes, they could probably still do it outside the office.
Abraham said webcams might be a far more powerful tool if installed in police stations, drivers' licences offices, welfare agencies and other places where people interact with officials who sometimes demand bribes to do routine work. A few agencies around the country have started such surveillance, he said, but most have not.
Chandy's effort comes as India has been racked by one corruption scandal after another. A former telecommunications minister is sitting in jail on charges that he gave cellphone licences to favoured companies, costing the government as much as $40 billion. Several corporate executives, an official involved in planning the Commonwealth Games and the scion of a political family are also behind bars while being tried on various corruption charges.
But transparency is tedious. For most of the day, as the videos stream from the Chandy chambers, the chief minister is either out of the office or sitting with aides and other politicians. The video from a second camera, trained on the outside chamber, shows aides at their desks answering phones or staring into their computer screens.
A career politician and a member of the ruling Congress party, Chandy had a webcam in his office when he was chief minister for two years from 2004 to 2006. But his successor, the leader of a communist coalition government, removed the device when he took over. Now in the opposition, the communists deride the webcams as a publicity stunt.
But others see virtue in such efforts, even if the details are still being refined.
In Bangalore, the top executive of a government-owned electricity utility has been using a webcam in his office. The official, P Manivannan, said he was now installing a 'hemispheric' camera that would capture the goings-on in his entire office. But he said he would no longer broadcast the video stream to the website of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company.
“I have been getting a lot of brickbats because of the cameras,” Manivannan said in a telephone interview. “My colleagues were telling me, 'What are you trying to prove - that you are the only honest one?'”
Once the new camera is installed, Manivannan said it would record everything. But anyone interested in viewing segments of the video would have to request the clips, though at no cost. That should ease tension in the office, he said.
He said he had success with a similar camera when he was in the city government and some politicians threatened to call a strike unless he reinstated a fired employee. The politicians backed off, Manivannan said, when he threatened to give a recording of their meeting to local television stations.
“I definitely believe putting a camera helps you prove you are accountable,” he said. “I would be very happy if tomorrow the government of India decided you must have a camera.”
©2011 The New York
Times News Service
