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India ranked 81st in corruption index

corruption perception index 2017

India has been placed at 81 in the recently-released corruption perception index 2017. What is the index? What does no. 81 mean? Read on.

According to the report, the index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople. It uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. This year, the index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43. Unfortunately, compared to recent years, this poor performance is nothing new.

And, India has got a score of 40, which has helped it position itself at 81st place. It is to be noted that India had received a score of 40 last year as well.

Here’s a graphical representation of the rankings:

New Zealand, Denmark top the table

According to the report, New Zealand and Denmark are the top two least corrupt countries, with scores of 89 and 88, respectively. The report notes that India, Phillipines, and Maldives, “score high for corruption and have fewer press freedoms and higher numbers of journalist deaths.”

What about India’s neighbours? Pakistan comes way behind at 117, at a score of 32; China is ranked 77; southern neighbour Sri Lanka is placed at 91.

How is the corruption rankings made?

Transparency International claims the “Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) aggregates data from a number of different sources that provide perceptions by business people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector.”

“The CPI 2017 is calculated using 13 different data sources from 12 different institutions that capture perceptions of corruption within the past two years,” it added.