India has been placed at the 81st spot among 180 nations in the global Corruption Perception Index for 2017, which was recently released by Transparency International.
The report has, in fact, named India among the worst offenders in terms of graft and press freedom in the Asia Pacific region.
The index ranks 180 countries and territories on the basis of their perceived levels of public sector corruption.
The index uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
The index placed India at the 81st place. In the 2016, India was ranked at the 79th position among 176 countries.
India’s score in the latest ranking, however, remained unchanged at 40. In 2015, the score was 38.
According to Transparency International, in some countries across the Asia Pacific region, journalists, activists, opposition leaders and even staff of law enforcement or watchdog agencies are threatened, and in the worst cases, even murdered.
The agency reports that in this respect, Philippines, India and the Maldives were found to be among the worst regional offenders.