India Ranks 76th among Least Corrupted Nation, Denmark First

BENGALURU: India improves its ranking in Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2015, moving from 85 to 76th position, as revealed by Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2015, reports TOI.

The change of government that happened in Delhi and the Centre is mostly due to the public outrage against corruption that India witnessed in the last two years. The ranking of CPI now brings that the corruption in public sector is still due. India’s score continues as 38 in CPI, for two consecutive years. The scoring system is based on a scale of 0-100.

CPI takes in account of the levels of corruption in public sector for nations across the globe.

India tops in ranking among its neighboring countries except Bhutan (27), which is far ahead than India. China ranks 83, Bangladesh 139 while Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal continue to fall back in the list.

The CPI report extends focus on corruption in the Asia Pacific region, calls Indian and Sri Lankan governments as pioneers in not standing up to their promises. On the other hand, governments in Bangladesh and Cambodia are inflaming the corruption by subduing on civil society. The report states Afghanistan and Pakistan as countries failing to curb corruption and China’s prosecutorial approach as a failure.

Director for Asia Pacific, Transparency International, Srirak Plipat writes to TOI, “India has been flooded with anti-corruption promises especially in the last few years—from the general election in May 2014 to the recent Delhi election in February 2015. The CPI scores, staying firm well below 50 at 38 out of 100 for both 2014 and 2015, show that there has been no improvement. The rhetoric has yet to become action. This year's CPI sends a message to people of India, as much as to the government. It invites people of India to question their governments and hold them to account to their election promises. If leadership is about delivery in an imperfect environment, this leadership is questionable—to say the least. The Modi government has set a new trend in Asia Pacific: fast and big in anti-corruption promises, while slow and small in delivery.”

In the world platform, Denmark tops as least corrupted country for the second consecutive year, with the score of 91 points; followed by Finland (90 points) and Sweden (89 points) in second and third position, respectively.

Top features of the corruption free nations includes public access to budget related information and freedom of press—The countries also show high rates of unity among people and less discrimination among rich and poor, reports an International press release.

The same press release adds that North Korea and Somalia occupies the last two positions of the list with 8 points. Brazil made a vast decline since last year with a drop of 5 points and fall of 7 positions. Petrobras scandal in Brazil is main reason for this downfall.

Other big leaps have been made by Netherlands in CPI ranking, which is now among the top five clean countries in the world. Switzerland fell to seventh position, from fifth in 2014. The report mentions that 68 percent of these worldwide countries have serious corruption issues and half of them are G20 nations.

Greece, Senegal, and UK made to the improvers list while Libya, Australia, Brazil, Spain, and Turkey are among the decliners.

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