India has been ranked 81 out 180 countries in the ‘Corruption Perception Index 2017’. The list was released by Transparency International. From 79 last year, its position dropped to 81. This shows the worsening state of corruption in India.
The index ranks 180 countries as per their perceived levels of public sector corruption. In 2016 India was ranked 79 in 176 countries. The index functions of the scale of 0 to 100, 0 being the most corrupt to 100 being the cleanest. Indi’s latest score is 40 which has remained unchanged since last year, in 2015 the score was 38.
India is doing better when compared to its neighbors like Pakistan and Bangladesh but is doing worse than China and Bhutan. Pakistan got a score of 32 and is ranked 117th, Bangladesh is at 143 with a score 28, Myanmar received a score of 30 and is ranked 130th and Sri Lanka is at 91st with a score of 38. Bhutan scored 67 and ranked 26th, and China scored 41 ranking 77th. There seems to be a high variation in public sector corruption in the Asia Pacific region, as more than half the countries score less than 50 in the index. Russia was ranked 135th with a score of 29.
The report also said that improvements will only be seen when there is a comprehensive strategy in place to fight corruption instead of isolated strategies. New Zealand and Denmark have the lowest amount of corruption. India was also termed one of the worst ‘regional offenders’ in the Asia Pacific region on the basis of activists, journalists opposition leaders and watchdog agencies being threatened or murdered. Countries that don’t protect the press and NGOs have been found to have the worst rates of corruption. The data showed that in the last six years, 9 out of 10 journalists were killed in countries scoring 45 or less in the index. It was also found that more than two-thirds of the countries on the list scored below 50. We knew India was corrupt, and now we know exactly how corrupt it is.