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India has moved up 11 notches in the corruption index to place 85th among 175 nations as against 94th last year, graft watchdog Transparency International said today.
Denmark retained its position as the least corrupt country in 2014 with a score of 92 while North Korea and Somalia shared the last place, scoring just 8, it said.
In India’s neighbourhood, China moved down to 100th place from 80th last year, while Pakistan and Nepal were at the 126th position. Bangladesh was 145th and Bhutan 30th in the ranking. Sri Lanka was ranked 85th with India. Afghanistan was at a bleak 172.
According to the Corruption Perception Index report, “the score for India increased by 2 points in 2014 from its 2013 score, helping India’s rank move up to 85 in 2014 from 94 in 2013”. India’s score stood at 38 as compared to 36 last year.
The improvement in corruption perception for India was driven primarily by two data sources — the World Economic Forum and World Justice Project’s index.
“A score increase on WEF suggested businesses in India were viewing the environment favourably with regards to their perception of corruption and bribery in the country.”
The WJP score also went up reflecting the perceptions of public sector corruption coming down slightly in India, the report said.
The report noted that in terms of the new government, the index possibly captured the anti-corruption mandate on which the new government was elected and the possibility of some reforms in this area.
“However, the data used for corruption perception mostly was collected prior to the change of government and therefore this will not reflect directly into any of the sources,” it said.
To calculate India’s position this year, nine out of 12 independent data sources specialising in governance and business climate analysis were also used.
These included the Bertelsmann Foundation, World Bank and World Economic Forum. They helped in measuring perceptions of corruption in the public sector and cross country comparability.
SK Agarwal, Chairman of Transparency International India, said the “new Government has got a full majority on the agenda of good governance, and it’s now high time to act and pass all pending anti-corruption bills”.
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