India Dips in Global Corruption Ranking

Bangalore: If there's a question that what is holding back India's growth, corruption is the obvious answer. With worsening corruption rate over the past few years, India drops 11 positions to 95 in the Global Corruption Rankings, reveals the new study by Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based anticorruption group.

India scored 3.1 on a scale to 0 to 10, according to the Transparency International's corruption perception index. India scored 3.3 last year, and anything below five is a bad news. Whereas, the neighboring countries like Pakistan and Nepal ranked at 134 and 154 respectively, apparently being the most corrupt nations in South Asia.

Being ranked at 95th position in the list, India is below China that scoring 3.6 points and ranked 75. The common Wealth Games last year and 2G spectrum allocations are the recent strings of corruption that have deteriorated the image of India.

183 countries were ranked according to the level of public sector corruption. India has only fared among the BRIC countries. But compared to South Asian region, India has done miserable when compared to Sri Lanka that ranked 86 and small Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal that ranked 38.

Rukshana Nanayakkara, acting director of Transparency International's Asia Pacific division quoted in an interview to Zeebiz, "It's not a good score at all for India." Amongst so much of negativity, there are few positive aspects of this evaluation. People are now enthusiastic to speak up against corruption and the limelight is on the movement that fights for a strong anti-corruption law in the country. The upper middle class in India has become intolerant towards corruption as they are most exposed to cases like bribery and are becoming outspoken of late.

The recent Anna Hazare "hungama" in India has taken up the fight against corruption to a different level altogether. This has forced the government to come up with a strict anti-corruption law. The Lokpal Bill, which stands as a synonym for anti-corruption, is under review in the current Parliament session.

New Zealand outshined as a corruption-free country and tops the list closely followed by Denmark and Finland at the second and third position. Sweden is fourth, while Singapore dropped down to fifth rank. Norway landed at the sixth position. All the top six countries have scored 9.0 or above.

Germany and Japan marked improvement than last year as they are tied at 14th. United States showed a dip as it is ranked at 24th, two nicks lower than 2010. Countries like Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia are placed at the bottom of the list.

The recent survey on "India vs Corruption" taken up by The Hindustan Times -CNN-IBN shows that people are now willing to speak against this issue and have come out with interesting responses. More than 78 percent of population feels that country lacks efficient rules and laws to fight corruption. While 68 percent feel that Lokpal Bill will not be enough to make the country corruption free. It's the continuous struggle against corruption that has awakened the government, and has affected their decisions. The growth rate of India is declining over the last two years and 91 percent of Indian population feels that social and political corruption is the major reason behind it. It's the corrupt politicians in the country that are responsible in hollowing the country's economy.