NEW DELHI: After being rated as the second most sexy nation, it’s time to swallow that bitter pill now: India stands 88th in the list of 159 nations ranked in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2005, released by Transparency International, a Berlin-based global watchdog on corruption.
India, having a CPI of 2.9 on the scale of 10, is placed along with eight others — Armenia, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gabon, Iran, Mali, Moldova and Tanzania. The good news is that there has been a minor improvement in India’ s position as compared to last year. Ranked 90th in the field of 146 countries, India’s corruption index in 2004 was 2.8.
The CPI 2005 indicates Iceland as the least corrupt while Bangladesh is right at the bottom along with Chad. The list indicates that more than two-third of the 159 nations surveyed scored less than 5 out of 10. This reflects serious levels of corruption being prevalent in the majority of countries surveyed.
On the perception scale of 10 to 0 (with 10 as most honest and 0 as most corrupt), Sri Lanka and China are ranked 10 places above India at 78. Both have an index of 3.2. Though China is ranked above India, it has dropped its ranking significantly as compared to 71 of last year. Pakistan is ranked 144 with an index of 2.1.
Singapore can take pride of being only Asian country amongst the top ten. It is ranked sixth with a score of 9.4. The others in the Top 10 club are: Finland and New Zealand (sharing the second place with an index of 9.6 each), Denmark (9.5), Sweden (9.2), Switzerland (9.1), Norway (8.9), Australia (8.8) and Austria (8.7). The United States (7.6) and United Kingdom (8.6) maintain their last year’s position of 17 and 11, respectively.
