Launched recently is a dead simple website – I Paid a Bribe that allows one to share, with anonymity, the occasions when one had to (or chose) to – well – bribe an agent. IMHO, the very concept of sharing a story of bribing is a cool way to attack the system rather than the individuals.

Here are a few things that I-Paid-a-Bribe (Did you note the name?) does:

You can share  a story of bribing – when you faced ‘bribe me for a task’ situation and how you tackled over it. For example, your lifestyle as a cushy couch potato and a hundred men long queue before a bus ticket under hot sun could make you do it. Share it then and lower your guilt. Or perhaps the  lame betel chewing officer behind the table was an ass, and you want to describe it all. No names, mind you says the website.

But that’s not all of it. The dharam sankata is not resolved by reporting only the stories of crass. Sometimes you may choose NOT to pay the bribe and be thrown out of the train. Users can share those moments of glory too! It works almost the FMylife way, but our take is that IPaidaBribe will likely have a tougher wire to walk considering the challenge of keeping up the quality of rants and thwarting the pursuit of moderation by the Government.

Everyone knows about the heat faced by Wikileaks, isn’t it?

One of the simplest yet best feature of this portal is that of appreciation: I didn’t have to pay a bribe! For an instance, during re-issuance of my passport recently, I came across a very efficient team at the Ghaziabad Passport Office. I felt very happy with the Tatkal passport service but really did not have a place to share my appreciation. Except verbally, among my friends of course. Now I can do just that.

I kind of liked the timing of this website, which needless to mention comes just round the corner when Sanjay Anandaram shared a great post on the dilemma of entrepreneurs in India and Alok Kejriwal shared a cross Asian perspective on ethics.

So who else wants to dip fingers and help resolve the muck. Really?

Dear Pi readers, what’s your take? How well would IPaidaBribe sit in your eyes?