India’s rank has improved by one place and has gone down to 85 among 180 countries in the CPI (Corruption Perception Index) of 2021. The new report was released by Transparency International which has also raised some concerns over India’s Democratic status.
The Corruption Perception Index ranks 180 countries and territories of the world by their perceived levels of public sector corruption as per the experts and business people who use a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 denotes highly corrupt and 100 implies very clean. The scores of the latest index have revealed that all areas are at a standstill as far as the fight against public sector corruption is concerned.
The countries with the weakest scores on the index are the most populous countries of the world including China with a score of 45 and India with a score of 40. Some other large economies’ scores include Indonesia with 38 on the Index score, Pakistan with a score of 28, and Bangladesh with 26 on the Index, as per the report by Transparency International.
Countries that have topped the index include Denmark, Finland, Norway, and New Zealand.
India’s rank was 86 on the Index in 2020 and it has improved by one place. All of the nation’s neighbours are ranked below it except Bhutan. Pakistan is ranked 140 and has gone down 16 spots since the last rankings. The report called India’s case quite worrying and said that the nation’s score has remained almost unchanged in the last decade. The report further added that some of the mechanisms that could help in combating corruption have been weakening for some time.
The report stated that there are concerns over India’s status as a democracy because the fundamental freedoms and the institutional check are degrading. Particularly, the activists and the journalists are at risk. These people have been the victims of attacks by police personnel, political militants, gangs, and corrupt officials. The report has put allegations on India saying that the civil societies that are vocal against the government are targeted with security, defamation, hate speeches and charges related to contempt of court.
Countries with weak scores are indicative of the fact that the anti-corruption institutions have been degrading or in some cases, there is an absence of an agency that can coordinate action against corruption.
Nations of the top such as the countries in Western Europe and the EU have been fiddling with transparency and accountability when it comes to response against COVID which is a threat to the clean image of the region. The low scores in parts of Asia, the Americas, and Eastern Europe can be attributed to the increasing restrictions put on the accountability measures. The basic civil freedoms in these areas allow for corruption to grow at a rapid rate more often than not.
