India has moved upon a global index but is still a slowpoke among the BRICS nations.

India has been ranked 81st in the global corruption perception index for 2017, released by Transparency International. It named the country among the “worst offenders” in terms of graft and press freedom in the Asia Pacific region.

The index uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

While Switzerland continues to top the list released every year on the first day of the World Economic Forum (WEF). India has improved its position from 92nd last year. India was at the 89th place in 2016.

But India’s ranking was the worst among the five BRICS countries in 2017 as well when China was ranked 54th, Russian Federation was placed at 56th, followed by South Africa (67) and Brazil (81). China has moved up to 43rd now, Russia to 53rd, South Africa to 63rd and Brazil to 73rd position.

The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, placed India at the 81st place. In the 2016 India was in the 79th place among 176 countries.

Transparency International further said, “In some countries across the region (Asia Pacific), journalists, activists, opposition leaders and even staff of law enforcement or watchdog agencies are threatened, and in the worst cases, even murdered”. “Philippines, India and the Maldives are among the worst regional offenders in this respect. These countries score high for corruption and have fewer press freedoms and higher numbers of journalist deaths,” it added as per the news sources.

In the last six years, 15 journalists working on corruption stories in these countries were murdered, as reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The analysis, which incorporates data from CPJ, showed that in the last six years, 9 out of 10 journalists were killed in countries that score 45 or less on the index.

Director Patricia Moreira said “No activist or reporter should have to fear for their lives when speaking out against corruption. Given current crackdowns on both civil society and the media worldwide, we need to do more to protect those who speak up,” Transparency International Managing.

Prepared from Media Sources by Seema Kumari

  Corruption Perception Index