India has been placed at 76th position in public sector corruption out of 168 countries in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2015, improving its slot from 85 in 2014 and 94 in 2013. Despite an improvement in the overall ranking, India’s corruption perception score remained same at 38 out of a 100 as it had in 2014, which is seen as insufficient improvement. It stood at the same position as Brazil, but seven places above China, and well above Russia, which came in at 119th.
India though does not have much to cheer about as neighboring Bhutan has achieved a much better ranking of 27. Countries facing strife and conflicts were found at the bottom of the index. For a third year running, Denmark was perceived as the cleanest country with a score of 91 and topped the list. North Korea and Somalia were the worst performers, scoring just eight points each ranked last. The US rose one spot this year to 16th place with a score of 76, tying with Austria. The UK rose three spots to place 10th, with a score of 81 that tied it with Germany and Luxembourg. The other top spots, from second to ninth, were occupied by Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore and Canada.
Transparency International in its report noted that a majority of countries on the list had seen their score improve, as citizen-led protest movements against corruption piled pressure on governments. The report further said that this year’s poor results demand that leaders revisit the genuineness of their efforts. They must fulfill promises and ensure efforts aren’t undermined in practice.
Among the characteristics shared by the top performers list were high levels of press freedom, transparency about budgets, high levels of public sector integrity and fair and independent judiciaries. Transparency International, however, cautioned that a clean public sector record at home didn’t necessarily translate into a good performance abroad. The Transparency International uses data from institutions including the World Bank, the African Development Bank and business school IMD to compile the perceptions of the scale of public sector corruption. The index grades a country on a scale of zero to 100, the latter being the least corrupt.
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