Bribery..ha? Here you take a bundle of notes!! A big fat bundle of shiny notes!!
Size does matter... surely the look of the bundle will make anyone happy...
But wait... they are all zero currency notes!! What the...
A big fat ZERO in the middle
5th Pillar, a local NGO in India, distributes zero rupee notes in the hopes that ordinary Indians can use these notes as a means to protest demands for bribes by public officials.
The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.
One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success.
Interesting approach to prevent bribery!! Definitely worths attention!
