I spent a month in India this Summer, promoting UCLA Anderson's Master in Financial Engineering (MFE) program, teaching and attending research conferences at the Indian School of Business (ISB), meeting entrepreneurs as well as senior government officials to talk about Financial Access at Birth (FAB) campaign and learn about India's efforts in bringing Financial Inclusion to the poor. The ISB Dean, Ajit Rangnekar, introduced me to Shiva Kumar, Chief General Manager at the Hyderabad Local Head Office of State Bank of India (SBI) -- the largest public sector bank in India.
Notice that there is minimal effort on the part of the customer -- all he or she needs is a mobile phone and even if the customer is not literate, it is easy to ask someone how to type the letters UNHAPPY to send the first text. The entire system involves absolutely no paperwork. The most brilliant part is that a permanent electronic record of the complaint is created which can be accessed and used for monitoring, feedback and incentives. The public sector banks in India have been notorious for their inefficiency, maddening paperwork requirements and an appalling lack of accountability because usually there is no simple way to complain and even when one does complain, the access is only to a local supervisor who has no incentives to follow-up on customer complaints. The system implemented by Shiva Kumar appears to work because there is now an awareness among the bank employees and branch managers that someone higher-up in the system may be watching and a record of inefficiencies and complaints could be accessed with a few simple key strokes.
The Right to Information Act (RTI), passed in 2005 in India, could make the use of such data even more potent in fighting corruption and inefficiency. In fact, Shaffi Mather has devised an ingenious way to fight corruption, largely making use of RTI, that is described well in his TED talk.
The key to such reforms is information. Information is power. The appropriate use of Information Technology can take this power away from those who are likely to abuse it for their own benefit and distribute this power appropriately for achieving optimal allocation of resources.