India ranks 85 in Transparency International’s corruption index

What is the News?

The Corruption Perception Index, 2021 has been released.

What is the Corruption Perception Index?

Released by: Transparency International annually since 1995.

Purpose: To rank 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people.

Scoring: The index uses a scale of 0 to 100 to rank Corruption Perception Index(CPI), where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

What are the key rankings of the Corruption Perception Index?

India’s rank improved by one place to 85 in 2021 from 86th in 2020. India was given a score of 40. Except Bhutan, all of India’s neighbors are ranked below it.

Top countries are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand each with a score of 88.

Relation between Human Rights and Corruption according to the index:

Corruption enables human rights abuses. Conversely, ensuring basic rights and freedoms means there is less space for corruption to go unchallenged.

The CPI 2021 shows that countries with well-protected civil and political liberties generally control corruption better. The fundamental freedoms of association and expression are crucial in the fight for a world free of corruption.

What should be done to reduce corruption?

a) Uphold the rights needed to hold power to account b) Restore and strengthen institutional checks on power c) Combat transnational forms of corruption and d) Uphold the right to information in government spending.

Source: This post is based on the article ‘India ranks 85 in Transparency International’s corruption index’ published in Indian Express on 26th January 2022.