By Tim Whewell BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents

So widespread is corruption in Georgia, that prosecutors have introduced unorthodox methods and are recruiting ordinary people in their fight for an honest and democratic state.

Georgia remains among the poorest countries of the former USSR

The excitement in the tiny room was infectious. Five young people clustered around, fiddling with an large man's woollen shirt.

Trailing from one side was a tangled knot of wires. And taped to the back was a tiny black box. It only took a moment to realise it was a hidden camera.

For the young volunteers in the sleepy Georgian town of Gori, it is a fascinating toy. But it is also a weapon - a most unlikely weapon - in Georgia's struggle to become an honest, democratic state.

The police warn them when there will be a raid, so I can never get them arrested A grandmother fighting corruption

It is four months on from one of the most dramatic expressions of people-power the region has ever seen.

Last November, tens of thousands of Georgians crammed the main street of the capital, Tbilisi, day after day, demanding the resignation of the despised, corrupt government of Eduard Shevardnadze.

He finally stood down when the charismatic 30-year-old opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili strode into parliament holding a single red rose, and told the president to go.

Revolutionary spirit

The young people with the camera will remember that day for their whole lives.

"We had a big table, a traditional Georgian feast," Tea Sameashvili told me, and continued: "We toasted the future, and of course, we danced. We had fireworks and people were happy, simply happy."

Tea Sameashvili now takes calls on the corruption hotline

Now, the camera is part of their efforts to keep the spirit of the revolution alive. It is given to ordinary members of the public who ring a special hotline to complain they have been asked for a bribe.

They are sent back with the camera to catch the bribe-taker in a sting operation.

Corruption has infected Georgian society from top to bottom. Almost everyone seems to take bribes, policemen, judges, doctors, professors, tax collectors, and so on.

Since the revolution, some of the most notoriously corrupt ministers and businessmen - who are household names - have been led off to jail by masked policemen. But ordinary people will not necessarily change their ways, and that is where the hidden camera comes in.

Sting operation

I met a 63-year-old grandmother living in a squalid tenement block in a small country town who had an extraordinary story to tell. She wanted her own son - and his wife's mother - to be put in prison.

She said they were drug dealers who had torn the family apart and forced her granddaughters to transport heroin.

If reformers wait too long, the window of opportunity will be shut President Saakashvili

"I have called the police so many times," she told me, "and the police are helping them. The police warn them when there will be a raid. So I can never get them arrested."

She explained that the police chief had been bragging that the dealers were paying him. So she decided she would trap him into saying it again, on camera.

For two hours, we waited, nervously. Then the old woman and her daughter returned.

The deputy governor of Gori masterminded the sting operation

They were breathless as they rewound the tape. They said the police chief had admitted he was "protecting" the drug dealers, exactly as they had hoped. And they had successfully recorded his words.

The women danced a jig around the room, and the deputy provincial governor, who had masterminded the sting operation, said he would take the tape as evidence to the prosecutor-general in the capital, Tbilisi.

It was just one episode in Georgia's battle with corruption. Some people do not feel happy with such unorthodox methods. They say the new government is cutting legal corners.

President Saakashvili makes no apologies for his government's haste to shake-up society.

"If reformers wait too long, the window of opportunity will be shut," he said. "It is a risky business, but if we do not try, we are 100% losers anyway."

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 8 April, 2004 at 1100 BST.