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Illustrations by Andrew Baker

Two Colgate students from India question pervasive corruption in their homeland. Now they’re combining social activism andacademic techniques to cut it off at the grass roots.By Aleta Mayne and Mark Walden

It was an elaborate plan. Flanked by five other college students, Bharadwaj Obula Reddy ’12 and SrikarGullapalli ’13 were plotting to disrupt the routine chaos in downtown Bangalore’s Jayanagar regionaltransport office (India’s equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles). Armed with a guitar, Gullapalliwould make his way into the middle of the dilapidated room, while the others dispersed to the corners.Together, they’d start belting out India’s national anthem, moving toward the middle of the room whileencouraging the citizens waiting in line for services to join them in song. At least, that was their plan.But security guards caught aglimpse of the crew with a guitarcase and videocamera, andpushed them back out of theoffice. Undeterred, and knowingthe sacrosanctity of India’snational anthem, the students re­entered — this time, launchinginto song from the moment theyopened the doors. “[Indians]believe that if someone is singingthe national anthem, everyonehas to stand straight and singalong — it’s a sign of respect,”Reddy explained. Theirbrazenness worked. The guardsallowed them to enter. Onlookersfroze in their tracks, a hush fellover the room, and one by one,the people in the room —approximately 80 of them —joined in, albeit quietly. When thesong ended, the students pulledinformational pamphlets out oftheir bags, threw them on thefloor, and ran back out into thewindy August day. As they hadhoped, people followed them intothe street, pamphlets in hand,wanting to know more. Reddy andGullapalli gleamed with pride. Itwas the first time they haddistributed their findings about thecorrupt nature of government offices in India; they had piqued people’s interest, and incited animpromptu patriotic act in order to protest government corruption. Ultimately, they would come to name their efforts “Shudhify” — a combination of shudhmeaning “pure” and the English suffix “ify.”

The great awakening“Very few Americans — probably no one in this country — leave their houses in the morning knowingthat, at some point during the course of the day, it’s probable that someone’s going to hit them up for abribe. But in India, they do,” said Michael Johnston, political science professor and the students’

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"[Gullapalli and Reddy]may be in a position to putinformation and tools inthe hands of the peoplewho really can change theway [Bangalore] isgoverned." — Political science professor Michael Johnston

Left to right: Srikar Gullapalli ’13 and BharadwajObula Reddy ’12

adviser. This concept — that bribery is engrained in Indian society — gets at the heart of Gullapalli andReddy’s efforts to effect grassroots change in their homeland. Corruption in post­independence India dates back decades, to the late 1940s, according to the SouthAsia Analysis Group. But, during the summer of 2011 — as Gullapalli and Reddy were conducting theirresearch — the situation was boiling over. Well­known social activist Anna Hazare had launched a high­profile hunger strike, campaigning for a strong anticorruption (Lokpal) bill. At the same time the billwas proposed, the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came under fire for alleged financialmalpractices related to the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and an alleged multibillion­dollar 2G cellphone scam. Growing up in India — Gullapalli in Bangalore and Reddy in West Godavari — both young men hadalways been cognizant of their government’s corrupt practices. As Reddy explained it, corruption issuch a common theme that it oftentimes forms the plot lines of Indian movies. Awareness of corruptionwas also discussed openly in both of the students’ homes. As school teachers, Reddy’s parents havewitnessed government unfairness firsthand, from limited school resources to increased jobrequirements, depending on the party in power. And, although Gullapalli’s father isn’t directly employedby the government, he does work for an electronics company that provides much of the technologyused by India’s national defense department. Gullapalli called that company “one of those few beaconsof perfect integrity where even the smallest infraction has a huge penalty.” He added that his father’s“biggest watchword is integrity.”

Yet, it often takes personal experience tobring the true meaning of something into focus.For Reddy, the tainted system hit him directlywhen he needed to obtain a driver’s license toserve as identification when he enrolled atColgate. To do so, Reddy had to go through a“middleman” who would be paid a bribe tofacilitate the process. “Basically, there’s a guyfor everything,” Reddy explained. “There’s alicense guy, a construction permit guy, a landregistration guy…” Reddy met his “license guy”not at the transport office, but through anarrangement set up by his father. In rural India,the process to obtain services starts with themiddleman. The fee: 3,000 rupees, orapproximately $60 (not much for middle­classcitizens, but a deal breaker for low­incomefamilies in India, home to the globe’s highestconcentration of people living below the WorldBank’s $1.25­per­day poverty line). BeforeReddy even set foot in the regional transportoffice, he and his father had to meet thismiddleman several times to fill out paperwork.Although he knew that this was the way thingswere done, Reddy was shocked when he and themiddleman went to the transport office and hewas told that he wouldn’t be taking his own test.“I was prepared to take it. I wanted to take it,”he emphasized. Despite Reddy’s protests, thegovernment official took the computer test forhim. Within two days, he was granted a licensethat is valid for 20 years. “That was a momentof insight,” Reddy reflected. Gullapalli attributes his interest in corruptionto a confluence of his background andexperiences, which included interning for a

microfinance research firm in Bangalore after high school graduation and then joining the BritishParliamentary debate team his first year at Colgate. As he argued over big ideas in competition againstother universities, he was selected to join 60 students from around the world for the 2009 GlobalChangemakers program in London, organized by the British Council. Through that program, he startedrefining some of his ideas — one of them being the seed of Shudhify. He wanted to identify the extentof Indian corruption at the local level and develop incentives for his countrymen to find new ways ofconducting business. In London, Gullapalli pitched an early concept for Shudhify to a World Bank representative, wholoved it. That positive reinforcement, combined with the energy of other participants who werebrainstorming ideas for grassroots change, got him fired up. That spring semester, he enrolled inJohnston’s Political Corruption course. “It was a conscious choice on my part, because ProfessorJohnston is one of the world’s leading experts in corruption,” he said. (In 2009, as author of the bookSyndromes of Corruption, Johnston received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Ideas ImprovingWorld Order. Johnston has also served in various roles for Transparency International, a globalnonprofit organization that monitors corporate and political corruption.)

Speaking a common languageReddy and Gullapalli became fast friends with their first namaskaram (hello) at Colgate. Although theyhail from two different states that are more than 400 miles apart in India, they learned soon aftermeeting that they both speak Telugu, a dialect native to Andhra Pradesh — Reddy’s state, whereGullapalli’s father grew up. It didn’t take long for them to discover that they also had shared interestsand motivations.

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“They have a level of energy that I can only dimly imagine,” Johnston noted of the friends. Theirambition became apparent to Johnston in early 2011 when they approached him with an overwhelmingarray of ideas on how to measure corruption, hold politicians accountable, and examine their country’ssystem of corruption at its roots.“To be indelicate, he was our bullshit radar,” Gullapalli said of Johnston. With the professor’s guidance,they honed in on a manageable goal: that seed of an idea that Gullapalli had pitched at the GlobalChangemakers program. They decided to survey Indian citizens outside of government officesimmediately after receiving services in order to gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of those sites. Now, the students had to answer the nagging question of how to put their ideas into motion. Theydiscovered an opportunity on a poster hanging on the office door of political science professor StanleyBrubaker, who had also been advising them. The sign prompted them to apply for the Lampert SummerFellowship in Public Affairs, coordinated by Colgate’s Institute for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics(PPE). Established by Ed ’62 and Robin Lampert P’10 in 2009, the fellowship provides full funding forColgate students to research a public affairs issue of global significance during the summer. As directorof the PPE, Brubaker was one of the board members who approved Gullapalli and Reddy for thefellowship. In addition, the pair secured funding from the World Bank and the British Council. Theirproject would begin in the summer of 2011.

Making opinions add upThe students chose Bangalore — Gullapalli’s hometown and a place with which Reddy was also wellacquainted — as the starting point for their Shudhify project. Known as India’s Silicon Valley, Bangaloreis “a developed, metropolitan city,” Reddy explained. “We wanted to do it in a place where people areeducated and socially aware.” Added Gullapalli, “[The people in] Bangalore have a history of holding the government accountableand of pushing for transparency.” One particular citizen feedback campaign, the Citizens’ Report Card(CRC), served as a building block for the students. Over three years, the Public Affairs Center mailedsurveys to households to measure public satisfaction with various public­sector agencies. Gullapalli andReddy hypothesized that brief, on­site surveys would more effectively gather data and hold thebureaucracy accountable. Unlike the CRC, the students would conduct their survey directly outside of those governmentoffices whenever possible. The questions would delve into the customers’ perceptions of the servicethey had received immediately after, rather than weeks or months later as with the CRC model. And,unlike other surveys, they would conduct theirs more frequently and on a local scale, to keep itlogistically and financially manageable. To achieve their goals, Reddy and Gullapalli created a survey that included five simple questions tobe rated on a scale of 1 to 10. The questions would ask about the ease and organization of the process,the helpfulness and accessibility of the government officers, speed of service, cost of service in termsof total money spent and work hours missed, and the cleanliness of the surroundings. Those questionswere followed by four yes/no questions to find out if a middleman was used, if they felt threatened, ifthey were asked to pay a bribe, and if they would use that office again. Although the two students drafted the questions, they didn’t trust the final product to their ownimaginations. They flipped on the B.S. meter and Skyped with Professor Johnston from their home basein India. Then, they took their questions on the road and showed them to 30 random citizens inBangalore, 90 percent of whom thought that the questions would do the trick. In terms of their academic interests and specialties, Reddy and Gullapalli move within each other’scircles on campus and have taken several of the same courses. But, at the end of the day, Gullapalli isthe political science major and Reddy is the math/economics major. With the survey questionsdeveloped, it was time for Reddy’s numerical skills to factor into the equation. The goal of the Shudhify project is to produce a single score rating multiple offices throughout thecity. In order to produce that kind of final figure, Reddy and Gullapalli had to create an algorithm; inother words, they had to give each rated question a point score based on its relative value. Theprocess had begun 9,000 miles away in McGregory Hall in the spring of 2011. At that time, Gullapalliwas taking Professor Dan Schult’s Applied Math for Social Sciences course (Reddy was already a classveteran). Together, they approached Schult for a little advice. “We went through the process just like in class and tried to identify what things could be measuredand what things would be important to measure,” Schult remembered. To determine the relative value — the importance of each item measured for their rating system —Reddy and Gullapalli convened focus groups in Bangalore early in the summer and askedrepresentative populations what they most looked for when they went to seek services at local policestations, regional transport offices (RTOs), and utility offices. “We realized that perception is all thatmatters,” said Reddy. “Because what the government needs to know is how happy the people are.” Based on their research, they weighted the first five questions to determine the number of possiblepoints that could be awarded for each. In an ideal world, for example, a police station could receive upto 20 points for a perfect rating on the service scale. But how would a customer know if his servicewas worth full points if he used a middleman? He wouldn’t. So, if he said “yes” to the question of “Didyou use a middleman?” Reddy and Gullapalli took off a standard number of points when the final tallywas complete. If the survey participant didn’t use a middleman and was threatened directly as a result,again, the offending agency was docked points on its final score. But, if the service was speedy and thecustomer went unthreatened, an agency stood to gain. In this way, the yes/no questions served as acheck on subjective responses. Having started with their gut instincts, Reddy and Gullapalli consulted professionals and nonprofitorganizations to test the soundness of their method. They reconnected with Schult and Johnston. Theyalso submitted their algorithm to the Public Affairs Center, authors of the Citizens’ Report Card. Afterreceiving an international blessing, they decided to go live with their survey. Dividing Bangalore into zones, the students identified the city’s six RTOs and chose 45 high­trafficpolice stations around the city as their survey sites. “The agencies we selected represent a mix ofessential and nonessential services, and denote what we saw as a cross­section of a citizen’s life in

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relationto theservicesprovidedby the

government,” the students explained intheir final report. Since then, they haverezoned the city according to its 28legislative constituencies so that politicianscan be, in the end, held accountable.Organized in that fashion, the feedback canserve as “a metric to judge a politicalincumbent when he stands up for re­election,” Gullapalli explained, noting that“politicians promise better services whenthey campaign.” To gain permission to conduct surveysin police stations, they sought the help of apolice commissioner, who also happened tobe the uncle of Reddy’s high school friend.“He is pro­change, very innovative,” Reddyexplained. “He asked us to write a letterthat he signed, stating that we should begiven any help we needed.” The pair also wanted to gauge thepublic’s satisfaction with the government

agencies that manage electricity, land allocation andinfrastructure development, water and sewage, andproperty taxes and town planning. Because the majorityof those agencies’ business happens in people’s homes,those surveys were conducted by canvassingneighborhoods near the selected police stations. Gullapalli and Reddy’s team of graduate students inBangalore administered close to 2,000 surveys, andmore are still being conducted.

‘Middlemen suck’Although data is still being collated, the students’ initial findings are dismal. None of the RTOs fulfilledeven half of the citizens’ expectations, with scores ranging from 3.93 to 4.8 out of 10. Yet, Gullapalliand Reddy remain optimistic about the potential for change. “While this depicts the sad state of RTOscurrently, it also conveys another important idea: as excessive corruption and inefficiency aredesensitizing the people as a nation, this statistic tells us that people are still expecting better servicefrom the government and have not given up hope,” the students explained in their report. The most corrupt RTO was found to be the Jayanagar office. For that dubious distinction, it was thechosen site of the students’ peaceful protest by song. The pamphlets they dropped before fleeingoffered simple information and advice: “Middlemen suck. Why? For an average increase in speed onlyfrom 4.276/10 to 4.492/10, is it worth all those extra 1000s of rupees they charge you?” Instead, theysuggested, the money is better spent on something else, like going to the theater. Customer satisfaction with police stations was also low — meeting less than or barely half of theexpectations. What’s more, at the two stations that received the lowest ratings, between 60 and 100percent of those surveyed said they had been threatened. Responses from all 2,000 surveys indicatedthat close to 40 percent reported being threatened. Gullapalli and Reddy are still collecting data regarding other types of agencies. From the early data,they have found interesting patterns when comparing different government agencies in the same areas,including correlations between high or low service efficiency and high or low corruption levels. Forexample, in one zone, the police station ranked the lowest among all police stations, the RTO alsoranked the lowest, and 100 percent of respondents to surveys in the same zone reported beingthreatened.

A plot to plot corruptionOnce all of the data is collected, Gullapalli and Reddy will create a map depicting the corruption scoresaround Bangalore. Different colors will indicate how much corruption or inefficiency exists in particularzones of the city. Their goal is to inform citizens — of the city’s best police station with the leastinstances of corruption, the location of the most efficient RTO, or the office that enables simple, hassle­free home construction. Between their own dissemination efforts and the press (the students have already garnered mediaattention in two articles in the Times of India), Gullapalli and Reddy believe that the spread ofinformation will empower citizens as well as encourage government officials to elevate standards anddecrease corruption. After all, “the government’s goal is to meet citizens’ standards,” Gullapalliemphasized. Acknowledging that not all government officials are corrupt, the students have been interviewingemployees at various offices, asking them why they believe people were dissatisfied and gave them alow score. Thus far, Gullapalli and Reddy have met a few local commissioners who have asked forsuggestions and are considering engaging with the other offices to improve their ratings. “Thewillingness of these government officers to work with us and their desire to get a better rating is

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encouraging,” Gullapalli said. “The next plan is to draw specific directives.” Taking a top­down approach has had its pitfalls, however, because getting access to“those who are actually doing the paper pushing” has been what Gullapalli and Reddyhave called a “bureaucratic nightmare.” They did receive help from a transportcommissioner, who gave them an official seal of permission to conduct their interviews,and they are hoping that other connections will pave the way in other offices. Gullapalli and Reddy are planning more performance activism — “wacky, crazy,attention­grabbing dares that are tailored to the trend that we observe in a particularoffice or zone,” they said in their final report. For example, they’re already choreographing a zombiedance mimicking Michael Jackson’s Thriller, to be performed at the government office that has beendeemed to have the slowest service. Gullapalli and Reddy see the potential for change as three­pronged. Citizens will be less tolerantand will be informed enough to be able to hold their government agency branches to the standard ofthe best branches in the city. Officers will perform better because they will know they are beingcompared to their counterparts in other parts of the city (they may also aspire to be transferred to amore desirable branch). And, private investment firms will be more attracted to areas of low corruptionand high efficiency.

A new springAs seen most recently with the Arab Spring, when everyday citizens join together, they can incite arevolution within their country. In India, too, change is starting — and Gullapalli and Reddy are amongthose igniting the fire. In an effort unrelated to the students’ work, but that is making an impact in the same areas, anonprofit organization in Bangalore called Janaagraha started a website called I Paid a Bribe(ipaidabribe.com). The site provides a platform for citizens around the world to report their storiesabout bribery and corruption. In March, the New York Times wrote about the site and included theencouraging story of Bhaskar Rao who, as transport commissioner for the state of Karnakata (whereBangalore is located), used data from the site to push for reforms in its motor vehicle departments.Now, licenses are applied for online, and Bangalore has the world’s first automated driving test tracks,which monitor drivers’ skills with electronic sensors — to eliminate “the whims and fancies of themotor vehicle inspectors.” A number of senior officers in the department were also “cautioned” andunderwent ethics counseling. “[The site] helped me get my colleagues to fall in line, and it helped mepersuade my superiors that we needed to do this,” said Rao, who is now the inspector general of policefor internal security. And remember that dilapidated office where the students protested in song? Last January, with thehelp of Rao, it got a makeover. As reported in the Hindu newspaper, the new 26,000­square­foot facilityboasts “Vitrified flooring, large windows, well­planned cubicles for the staff, chambers for officers,clear, bilingual boards and signages for different sections, giving a distinct appearance to this RTO.”Perhaps most notably, the renovations also included the installation of surveillance cameras to watchout for “touts” — middlemen and other repeat visitors who might be engaging in illegal activities. This summer, Reddy and Gullapalli will continue their own work in Bangalore. They have applied foradditional funding and, with Johnston’s help, will be meeting experts from various organizations whoare interested in supporting the Shudhify project. “In the United States, we brought corruption broadly under control, but it took a century and a half,”Johnston said. “India may not have that much time, but it also can’t be done quickly. [Gullapalli andReddy] may be in a position to put information and tools in the hands of the people who really canchange the way [Bangalore] is governed. That’s a major contribution.” Reddy and Gullapalli have dared themselves to tackle a systemic social issue in the world’s second–most–populous country. They have dared their officers to turn away from the graft that exponentiallyincreases public­sector salaries, and they have challenged their fellow citizens to stop participating in asystem that stratifies services for rich and poor, preventing everyone from enjoying the benefits of atruly democratic society. More dares are in the offing, and while another flash mob might provoke a smile or raise aneyebrow, the intended outcomes are intensely serious. For Gullapalli and Reddy, what began as a classproject could — in the decades to come — produce a sea change in the way that Indian society seesand conducts its public life. A renovated political system would allow Gullapalli to pursue one of hisdreams: running for office and serving his constituents without the ethical concerns that come withnavigating a system that runs, in part, on bribery. On the cusp of graduation, Reddy — instead offollowing his father’s advice to work in the United States — could chase his entrepreneurial instincts inIndia. He could found a business without budgeting the speed money that he would currently need toensure a quick completion of his licensing paperwork. Like most college students, Reddy and Gullapalli have big plans for life after commencement. But,unlike many of their American peers, they believe that they have work to do before they can pursuetheir ambitions. They must shudhify their homeland. They began by singing with five friends, andthey’re determined to have a whole nation join their anthem before the chorus ends.