Technology against Corruption, are we loosing it ?
In this story, I will be addressing India a country on planet Earth of Milky Way galaxy, but this article is meant for any developer from any developing nation that is facing the monstrosity that is corruption. My aim is not to whine or complain but to try and bring some important issues into the light that I see regularly. So let’s get started.
India is moving toward digitisation faster every day, which is good for our country. I believe this is a really positive change because right now, one of the biggest problems facing India, other than population, is corruption. Technology has the power to limit the corruption in India and so, the developers are going to be the torchbearers for this change, because we, the developers, are the powerhouse of this technological movement. But as Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Some of us forget this great responsibility in order to get more business. It’s unfortunate and it needs to change.
Let me share few of my experiences with you. Last year, I started working on a project that could help restaurant owners to understand their customers better. I was trying to do this by allowing customers to scan their bills by our app in exchange for some incentive(s). While doing my research, I came across some really shocking things. Most of the POS (Point Of Sale) systems had some sort of mechanism in them which allowed the restaurants to alter their bills. And it doesn’t stop there, oh no. Similar POS systems are being used in many businesses other than the hospitality industry. They do this to save taxes obviously.
When I found out about this first, I called up one of the best POS seller companies in India (I won’t name them) and enquired about the existence of such a mechanism in their systems. Initially, they denied it completely, but when I pressed further, they insisted on discussing it in person. We set up a meeting, and there, one of their sales personnel told me about this special button in their POS systems that works like a plugin one has to buy for an extra 20,000 INR. This plugin can automatically alter all the bills of the current month to adjust the total income of the restaurants to whatever figure the owner likes. It also allows them to charge extra VAT and other taxes from their customers as most of the customers don’t pay attention to bills.
Now let’s come back to my app. It functioned by creating a database and storing most of the bills of the restaurants, so if the restaurants are using some POS system plugin to alter the bills, then my app and the POS system will obviously create problems for each other. The restaurant owners were unwilling to remove said plugins from their POS systems, so I only had two options in the end — I could either make a similar mechanism in my system as well, or I could just drop the idea and move on. It was not an easy choice. My team and I had been working on this project with full enthusiasm for months now. To accept that in the end it was all for nothing was a difficult choice. But it was also the right choice to make.
I decided to move on and promptly started working on something else. Such is the life of a developer, and I’m not complaining. All I want to say is that this is only one story from one industry. I can bet that this is happening in other fields, too. But that doesn’t mean there is no hope.
A few years back, I read this story in the newspaper that some university’s employees were on strike to protest against the university’s plans to implement an online checking system. I was curious to know why they were on a strike for this. On the news, employees were saying that this will take away their jobs, but the university was ensuring them that nothing like this will happen. But their assurances were falling on deaf ears, because despite all that, the strike continued and eventually the university had to drop the idea.
Later, somebody from the university teaching department told me that the real reason behind this was that some of the employees were actually helping students pass the exams. They allow the students to come to their office, solve the paper and submit it again in exchange for a handsome amount of money. For all I know, the guy could’ve been lying and it could all be just a hoax, a juicy piece of gossip. But the point I’m trying to make here is that technology does have the power to scare the shit out of pests like these who are destroying their own nation.
India has just stepped foot into the realm of digitisation. Many apps and software are being developed to aid this process every day, and being a developer, any one of us could find ourselves in a situation like this. If that happens, will you be strong enough to take a stand against corruption or will you join the Dark Side ?
That’s the question we need to ask ourselves.
Because we are the ones who have the superpower to build this nation function by function.
Please feel free to share your views in the comment section below. If you liked the article, please share it with fellow developers. We need to stand strong in the face of corruption. Get the word out!
