Do rising levels of corruption enable authoritarianism? | In Focus

The anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) has released the 2021 Corruption Perception Index, or CPI. This Index ranks 180 countries on their perceived levels of corruption in the public sector. Countries are evaluated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is very clean and 0 is very corrupt.

This latest CPI has revealed that globally, corruption remains at high levels, with the average score at 43 out of 100. Out of the 180 countries, 131 have made no progress against corruption, two-thirds scored below 50, indicating that corruption is a major problem, while 27 slipped to their lowest score ever.

Although India’s rank improved from 86th to 85, its score of 40 is lower than the global average of 43, which seems to indicate that corruption in India is higher than in most other countries.

The report also states that rising corruption is an enabler of human rights abuse and authoritarianism. For a better understanding of CPI, global trends in corruption, and what the report has to say about India, we speak to Venkatesh Nayak.

Guest: Venkatesh Nayak, development sector veteran who has worked on transparency and public audit mechanisms, and is currently with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan

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