5 Global Indices that depicts the progress of India in Various Fields

Global Hunger Index 2020 (GHI)

The GHI this year was published with the theme ‘One Decade To Zero Hunger’ ‘Linking Health And Sustainable Food Systems’.

In the past two decades, from 2000-2020, India has not succeeded and stayed in the “alarming” or “serious” category by scoring just 27.2 points out of 100. India is in the 94th rank out of 107 countries. India has been marked in the ‘serious ‘ hunger situation category by the ‘Welt Hunger Hilfe’ who publishes this report. In 2000, India scored 38.9 points. Higher the points maximum is the seriousness of the hunger issue.  The reports also mentioned “South Asia’s child stunting rate as of 2019 was 33.2 percent, down from 51.3 percent in 2000. India – the region’s most populous country, experienced a decline in under-five mortality in this period, driven largely by decreases in deaths from birth asphyxia or trauma, neonatal infections, pneumonia, and diarrhoea”.

Climate Change Performance Index released by German Watch

The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) has been published annually since 2005. It tracks the countries’ efforts to withstand climate change. It is an independent monitoring tool whose goal is to enhance transparency in international climate politics. It facilitates comparison of climate protection efforts and progress made individually in various countries.

Despite the fact that India has one of the largest growth trends, its per capita emissions stay at a comparatively low level, rated very high for their well-below 2°C compatibilities. India ranks the 10th with a score of 63.98 points out of 100.  Various parameters, including Greenhouse Gas ( GHG ) Emissions, renewable energy use, etc., are taken into consideration while calculating this index. India has significantly minimised the GHG emissions while developing reliability on renewable energy. India has taken a great initiative by hosting the International Solar Alliance and it is way ahead of China(48th), USA (55th) and Canada (56th) in practising the Paris Climate agreement.

World Happiness Report by the United Nations

The rankings of happiness of the country this year are based on the pooled results from Gallup World Poll surveys conducted between 2017-2019 and continue to show both change and stability. The top countries seem to have a high value for many key variables that are found to support their well-being, including income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity, to such a degree that year to year changes in the top rankings are to be expected.

India is a new entrant belonging to the bottom-ten group ranked 144th out of 153 countries. Its major and constant decline in life evaluation scores since 2015 signifies that its annual score in 2019 is now 1.2 points less than that of 2015.

The ten countries with the maximum declines in average life evaluations predominantly suffered some combination of economic, political, and social crisis. The five largest drops since 2008-2012 were in Venezuela, Afghanistan, Lesotho, Zambia, and India, with drops over one point in each case.

The maximum life evaluation drops were about 1.8 and 1.5 points in Venezuela and Afghanistan respectively. India which is close to a fifth of the global population faced a 1.2 point decline. New Delhi, where the CM Arvind Kejriwal, has started Happiness Curriculum in schools ranks in the bottom ten cities of the world in the happiness index. Our neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Srilanka ranks 66th, 107th 130th rank respectively. The astounding fact is that Iran, Iraq and Palestinian territories that are usually war-torn have ranked better than India.

Corruption Perception Index (CPI)  by Transparency International

Corruption is a pan India oil that is required to move the machinations fast. People are in a compulsion to give bribes in one or other way to process their work. On 28th May 2014, Narendra Modi on his first day in PMO, set up an SIT committee under a retired SC judge to deal with corruption.

He assured the people that he would bring back the black money to India during his election rallies. The rest is ‘sarcasm’. Now in 2020, no one dares to speak about black money as if all the richest in our country have kept their transactions clean. But Transparency International broke out this perception of Indians by announcing the Corruption ‘perception ‘ Index in which our ”VISHWAGURU” and ”MOTHER OF DEMOCRACY’  India is at the 80th rank out of 180 countries.

World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) by Reporters Without Borders

Each year, since 2002, the Reporters Without Borders releases an index which ranks countries according to the freedom of expression of journalism. India secured 142nd rank out of 180 countries. Our PM and HM seem to completely support freedom of the press, to the extreme level, that they failed to utter a single word when renowned senior journalists Gauri Lankesh and Shujaat Bukhari were shot down.

Based on the previous ten reports (2010-2020) of WPFI,  649 journalists were killed all over the world in the current decade. Almost close to 6% (38) of the total journalists killed were from India. Indian journalists critical of the government always seem to face trolls and death threats on many social media platforms. Even while writing this blog, a journalist may have been shot dead as he exposed the scholarship scam, another journalist may have been burnt down in India.