According to the latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by the Transparency International, India has moved up to 78th position in 2018. India was ranked 81st in 2017.
The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, placed India at the 78th place. In the 2016, India was in the 79th place among 176 countries. The index uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
Interestingly, the United States has fallen out of top 20 countries for the first time since 2011. However, Pakistan, which was ranked 117 in 2017, is at the same position in 2018. Denmark and New Zealand bagged the top two positions in the 2018 index while Somalia, Syria and South Sudan were at the bottom respectively.
"As India gears up for its upcoming elections, we see little significant movement in its CPI score, which moved from 40 in 2017 to 41 in 2018. Despite spectacular public mobilisation in 2011, where citizens demanded that the government take action against corruption and advocated for the passage of the comprehensive Jan Lokpal Act, these efforts ultimately fizzled and fell flat, with little to no movement on the ground to build the specialist anti-corruption infrastructure required," the Transparency International said in a press release.
It said that despite stagnation and declines in the 2018 scores, there are promising political developments within the Asia Pacific region, particularly in Malaysia (47), Maldives (31), Pakistan (33) and India (41) that will be important to watch moving forward.
"In all four countries, massive public mobilisation against corruption coupled with significant political participation and voter turnout resulted in new governments that promise extensive anti-corruption reforms. However, despite these encouraging developments, we are yet to see how this translates into solid action, especially when it comes to combating elusive forms of grand corruption."