India’s plummeting rank in key global indices worries former civil servants

New Delhi: Terming India’s poor ranking in the list of countries across different indices an enormous concern, Constitutional Conduct Group – a group of former civil servants – has demanded that the government should take the matter seriously.

“Sadly, the Government of India (GoI), instead of expressing concern at such a decline and attempting to stop the deterioration, has been more concerned with attacking the reports and surveys and stating that they are wrong or deliberately misleading,” the Group said in a statement.

The latest such report showing a fall in India’s ranking among countries is the Global Hunger Index, 2021. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is prepared by European NGOs of Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe and measures and compares hunger in different countries of the world.

In terms of the status of women, the 2021 Global Gender Gap Report placed India at the dismal rank of 140, a drop of 28 spots, much below the 65 rank that Bangladesh is at.

Moreover, the child sex ratio has fallen from 983 girls per 1000 boys in 1951 to 899 per 1000 in 2018, underlining the strong and pervasive male child preference in Indian society.

The World Happiness Report which is brought out by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network measures subjective wellbeing by relying on life evaluations, positive emotions and negative emotions. The World Happines Report of 2020 also places India very low. It ranks India at 139 out of 149 countries.

The March, 2020, ‘Democracy Report’ of the widely respected V-Dem Institute in Sweden noted the increasing challenges for the media, civil society and the opposition to function freely under the current regime and observed that “India has continued on a path of steep decline, to the extent it has almost lost its status as a democracy.”

“India has become known internationally for criminalizing dissent and using laws relating to sedition and terrorism against those activists, media persons and opposition politicians who stand up against the ruling dispensation. Human rights violations continue apace and constitutional institutions like the Election Commission and the judiciary are undermined and eviscerated by all manner of means including the lure of post-retirement sinecures, intimidation and threats,” the statement said. – INDIA NEWS STREAM