India fared better in Corruption Perception Index, ranked at 72nd

SEP 26 : The Berlin based Transparency International has come up with the annual report of Corruption Perception Index. The annual report was released in Berlin and London on Wednesday, this time the Corruption Perception Index, CPI of 180 countries has been covered. It gave a jolt to many countries while for many countries; it was a sigh of relief...

The organisation that defines corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gains” said that ‘ India fared better than last year’.

Though it was not a matter of pride for fellow Indians as it is still among the countries where corruption is very high.

India scored 3.5 points as against 3.3 points score of last year. India is ranked at 72nd place along with China, Mexico, Brazil, Morocco and Suriname.

This is India’s best score in a period of ten years.

Bhutan enjoyed the best ranking among the South Asian countries in the previous annual reports is now ranked 46th with a couple of other countries.

Bangladesh continues to be the most corrupt among the South Asian countries ranked at 162 in the CPI, with 2 points.

The economists in Bangladesh has questioned the methodology used by Transparency International and said that if all the factors relating to corruption were taken into consideration in comparison to other countries Bangladesh would have fared well in the Index.

The noted economist also pointed that it is the only country to make hue and cry over the findings of transparency index, which is based on perception.

Pakistan is ranked at 138 with a score of 2.4 and Nepal at 131 with a score of 2.5. Sri Lanka is ranked at 94 th and Maldives at 84 th.

At the bottom of the list are Somalia and Myanmar, both jointly sharing the last position — 175th rank.

Denmark , Finland and New Zealand jointly share the first rank with a CPI of 9.4.

Transparency International, since 1995 brought out a tool to calculate the corruption index of the countries of the world, ordering the countries according to “the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians”.

The scale consists of score between 0 and 10, a higher score tells of less corruption whereas a lower score tells of more corruption in the country.

Johann Graf Lambsdorff of the University of Passau, developed CPI. It is based on the data of the polls and surveys from different institutions.

At least three sources should be available in order to rank a country in the CPI.

The result depends on poll hence the result is less reliable for countries with fewer sources. Also definition of corruption varied from one country to other. A political donation is legal in some countries but may be illegal in other.

Hence, the subjectivity in the result cannot be ignored.

A country get recorded in CPI may very from one year to another but it isn’t necessarily that the corruption index has changed over a short period of time can vary because of the methodologies used, the questionnaire, change in perception etc.

Hence a change of order in CPI may only emerge in the index over longer period of time.