Toronto, December 18 (MExN): A worldwide ranking of civil, economic and personal freedom, the Human Freedom Index 2020 which was released on Thursday, placed India at the 111th spot out of 162 countries. In 2019, India ranked 94 on the index.
However, India has been ranked ahead of China and Bangladesh, which ranked 129 and 139 on the 2020 index respectively. The first three sports have been bagged by New Zealand, Switzerland and Hong Kong.
India’s scored 6.30 out of 10 in personal freedom and 6.56 in economic freedom. The country’s overall human freedom score was 6.43.
Human Freedom Index was published by American think tank Cato Institute and Fraser Institute in Canada. The index, based on 2018 data (the most recent year of available comparable data), takes into account 76 indicators of personal, civil, and economic freedoms to rank 162 countries from 2008 to 2018, according to a press release from the Fraser Institute.
The institutes noted that while economic freedom globally increased slightly from 2008 to 2018, personal freedom fell by 0.21 points, with declines in all but two of the 10 years. Religion saw the largest decrease in freedom (0.63) followed by identity and relationships (0.43) and rule of law (0.31). The rule of law also has the lowest overall score at 5.09.
The United States and United Kingdom are tied at the 17th spot on the index. War-torn Syria ranked the last on the list.
“The report continues to find a strong, positive relationship between freedom and prosperity, but also finds that there is an unequal distribution of freedom in the world. Fifteen per cent of the world’s population lives in the freest quartile of countries in the index, while 34 per cent lives in the bottom quartile of countries,” the authors of the report Fred McMahon and Ian Vásquez said.
