Read the reply I got from Transparency International about India's CPI:
Dear Rajendra,
Thank you for your interest in Transparency International’s (TI) work and
specifically your enquiry regarding India ’s scores on the Corruptions
Perceptions Index. Your email was passed on to me, as I am responsible for this
indicator, together with TI’s two other main tools, namely the Bribe Payers
Index, and the Global Corruption Barometer.
I will try to answer each of your questions in turn:
1. CPI for India in the year 2000 was 2.8, which has gone up to 3.3 in the year
2010. Does this mean that corruption has reduced in India over the decade?
Ans: The CPI captures corruption perceptions, rather than incidence of
corruption. Specifically it captures (largely business executives and country
experts) opinions on the proliferation of corruption in a country’s public
sector. Thus the change in CPI cannot conclusively state that actual corruption
in India has fallen over this period.
2. "Given its methodology, CPI is not a tool that is useful for trend analysis
or for monitoring the changes in the perceived levels of corruption over time
for all countries." Can it also mean that despite CPI going up from 2.8 to 3.3,
the corruption has actually increased?
Ans: The CPI score is compiled based on the availability of a range of surveys
for each country. As such, the source data for India for 2000 is different from
that of 2010. Even if the sources were identical for India for these two years,
the percentile matching approach we employ to standardise scores means that we
take India’s ranking from each survey, such that it is relative to the other
countries ranked and any change in the countries covered by each survey can
alter the standardised score attributed to India. Finally, changes have been
made to the methodology of the CPI itself over the 15 years since its
establishment. These methodological reasons limit the application of the CPI as
time series data.
>From the change in CPI scores over the 10 year period, we can conclude neither
>that Corruption has decreased nor that it has actually increased. Rather, the
>CPI is an important Index which captures corruption perception around the
>world on any given year, and can rank countries globally with the index now
>covering 178 countries. Indeed please also refer to our two other tools which
>I mentioned above, which also capture other elements of corruption in any
>given country. As corruption is in its very nature difficult to measure, we
>need a set of tools in order to make affirmative judgements, particularly
>changes over time.
I hope this answers your questions.
Kind regards,
Deborah Hardoon
