Toothpick: 1 - High Tech 0: Why cutting corruption via electronic benefit transfers turns out to be harder than we think
A fascinating new paper from Vivek Srinivasan and colleagues at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute that looks deeply into how direct cash transfers of social benefits in India supported by a very sophisticated tech architecture play out in practice. The result: high hopes of cutting out corrupt middlemen and making transfers instantaneous are not being realized. Front-end gatekeepers are finding insidious new ways to assert their power and continue to extract bribes by delaying payments, forging entries or demobilizing tech equipment (in one case using toothpicks). An excellent empirical word of caution that highlights that high-tech-direct-cash does not equal corruption free - and perhaps helps us design not only better tech, but also better incentive systems for the future.
Srinivasan, V., et al. (2014): “IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A “DIRECT” CASH TRANSFER?”, CDDRL Working Paper, December 2014.