The 2021 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency International places India 85th on a list of 180 countries, one position above last year.
Not much has changed about how corrupt India is perceived to be in a decade. The latest Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for 2021, released recently, said India was among 86% of the 180 countries the index covers that have made little to no progress since 2012.
Topping the index this year are Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand, all tied with scores of 88. With a score of 40, India ranks 85th. Its rank is a significant jump over the 94th place it was in back in 2012, but the score is only a minor improvement over the 36 it had then. Compared to its neighbors, though, it fares far better.
But the stagnation is worrying, the report said, and listed India as a “country to watch”. “There are concerns over the country’s democratic status, as fundamental freedoms and institutional checks and balances decay. Journalists and activists are particularly at risk and have been victims of attacks by the police, political militants, criminal gangs, and corrupt local officials,” the report said.
Pakistan slipped 16 places to 140 in the list of 180 countries. This is Pakistan’s worst drop in these rankings since 2010. In 2010, the Islamic nation had registered its worst performance and was relegated to 146th rank.
The pandemic, the report added, offered an excuse for Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Singapore governments to “tighten control and weaken accountability”.
The CPI, which measures how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be by its experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of zero to 100 where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
