INDIA: Scoring 40 out of 100, India ranks at 85th position among 180 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 2021, published by Transparency International.
While the country’s score has remained stagnant over the past decade, it moved one rank down, 86th in 2020 to 85th in 2021. The report called the case of India ‘particularly worrying’ and flagged concerns over its democratic status as fundamental freedoms and institutional checks & balances decay. Additionally, it also underlined that journalists, activists, and civil society organizations were particularly at risk.
The global average of 43 has remained unchanged for the tenth year in a row. Despite multiple commitments on the issue, a total of 131 countries made no significant progress in the last decade. Two-thirds or 123 countries scored below 50, signifying serious corruption issues.
Corruption Perceptions Index
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scores countries on how corrupt their governments are believed to be. CPI scores countries and territories around the world, on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) based on their perceived levels of public sector corruption. Transparency International, the formulator of the global index, is an organization that works to end the injustice of corruption.
The scores are allotted based on a combination of at least 3 out of 13 data sources from different corruption surveys and assessments. These data sources are compiled by various globally renowned institutions such as World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
Some of the factors under the ambit of public sector corruption utilised to compile CPI are- bribery, diversion of public funds, the ability of governments to contain corruption in the public sector, nepotistic appointments in the civil service, access to information on public affairs/government activities, state capture by narrow vested interests, and so on.
Since a CPI rank is merely the position of a country relative to others, it can change if the number of countries included in the index changes. Thus, the rank is not as important as the score for indicating the level of corruption in the given country.
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