By Ruma Dubey

The ruling Govt won with a thumping victory because we Indians wants to break free from an immoral and corrupt Govt. We thought that with the new Govt, new thoughts and new ways of working, it will clear the way for a “cleaner” India.

We are nearing the end of the five-year term and instead of corruption going down, there is proof that it has increased. India’s ranking in the global Corruption Perceptions Index, released by Transparency International this week, shows that it has slipped two places to the 81st rank in 2017, along with Ghana and Turkey. In 2016, it was ranked 79 among 176 countries in the index.

The Index ranks countries and regions on their perceived levels of public sector corruption. It uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. India in 2017 ranked at 40. Mind you, all this is before the latest banking scam after which the trust factor is all the more dented.

What is a bigger slap on the face is that in the analysis for the Asia-Pacific region, Transparency International stated, “Unfortunately, the results from the 2017 index also show that corruption in many countries is still strong…the Philippines, India and the Maldives are among the worst regional offenders in this respect. These countries score high on corruption and have fewer press freedom and higher numbers of journalist deaths.” So we have fallen down two ranks w.r.t corruption and freedom of press. Isn’t that what we all have been experiencing in our day-to-day lives? If it brings any succor, China is not too far away at 77 and Pakistan is way below at 117. But can we even compare ourselves with these two?

The report found that smear campaigns, harassment, lawsuits and bureaucratic red tape are all tools used by certain governments in an effort to quiet those who drive anti-corruption efforts,

And who topped the list? New Zealand is at number one, followed by Denmark at 2, Finland, Norway, Switzerland at 3; Singapore and Sweden at 6. Right at the bottom of the Index, the three most corrupt nations in the word currently are Syria, South Sudan and Somalia.

Did we hear or see any media covering this news extensively? No, because everyone is too busy covering other news and trying to pin all banking scam to the previous Govt while the real concern should be to prevent these frauds from happening over and over again. The bias in the media could not have been more glaring. If economic growth jump could be front page news, why not this?

There is no denying the fact that corruption is too deep rooted in India to go; there is some small change we see once in a while; a small glimmer of hope which we see through some individuals. Lets just hope that this glimmer becomes a bright sun and wipes out all darkness which engulfs our country.