Editorial note: This story has been written using secondary information from published reports and publicly accessible information about Bribes.fyi. The creator was not interviewed directly for this piece. 

A bribe is usually designed to leave no trace. A cash payment changes hands, a demand is made quietly, and the person walking out of a government office often has little more than a frustrating story to tell.

But what if thousands of those stories could be turned into data?

That is the idea behind Bribes.fyi, a crowdsourced platform created by Aryan Nishad, a B.Tech student at Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology in Delhi. The platform lets people anonymously report alleged bribe demands and then uses those reports to show patterns across cities, states and government departments.

Turning everyday experiences into data

Bribes.fyi was launched on 2 July with a simple question at its core: what if there was public data on the everyday corruption people encounter while accessing government services?

Nishad describes the platform as a privacy-first space where people can report bribery incidents without creating an account. A user can enter details such as the government department involved, the city, the amount allegedly demanded, the purpose of the payment, and whether they eventually paid or refused.

The process takes about a minute. Once submitted, the report appears anonymously, with........

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