Skip to main content

One of the least peaceful countries, India's global peace ranking deteriorates: Report

A just-released report has asserted that India's ranking in the Global Peace Index (GPI) is 141st among 163 countries, deteriorating by four ranks in a year. Ranking 163 countries by providing a score to each, the report, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), headquartered in Sydney, Australia, has found India to be one of the least peaceful nations in the region.
Thus, among its neighbours, India ranks worse than Bhutan (15), Sri Lanka (72), Nepal (76), Bangladesh (101) and China (110). The only consolation is, India's 141st rank is better than Pakistan's, 153rd. Afghanistan ranks worst than all the countries, 163rd.
With offices in several top world cities -- New York, Brussels, The Hague, Mexico City, and Harare -- IEP's rankings, now in the 13th year, are claimed to be a "leading measure of global peacefulness". The report presents data-driven analysis on peace, its economic value, trends, and how to develop peaceful societies.
GPI covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population, using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, and measures the state of peace using three thematic domains: the level of societal safety and security; the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict; and the degree of militarisation.
Assessing ongoing domestic and international conflicts, the report finds Bangladesh (1.979 on a scale of 5) and China (1.982) more peaceful than India (3.039) and Pakistan (3.594). As for the level of societal safety and security, India's score is 2.329, better than Bangladesh (2.517), China (2.518), and Pakistan (2.987). And regarding militarisation, Bangladesh (1.668) and China (2.016) score better than India 2.566 or Pakistan 2.575.
As for economic cost of violence, India and Sri Lanka are calculated to be spending 5% of GDP. But as for Bangladesh, this ratio is 3% of GDP, China's is 4% and Pakistan 7%.The results for this year show that the average level of global peacefulness has improved very slightly. Though this is the first time the index has improved in five years, the average country score improved by just 0.09 per cent, with 86 countries improving, and 76 recording deterioration -- India and Pakistan falling in the second category.
The report says, Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the world, a position it has held since 2008. It is joined at the top of the index by New Zealand, Austria, Portugal, and Denmark. Bhutan has recorded the largest improvement of any country in the top 20, rising 43 places in the last 12 years, it adds.
While Afghanistan is rated as the least peaceful country in the world, replacing Syria, which is now the second least peaceful country, other least peaceful countries among the bottom five are South Sudan, Yemen, and Iraq.
The report regrets, South Asia’s score for every indicator in ongoing conflict is less peaceful than the global average, and in four out of six cases found to be deteriorating. Only the category of deaths from internal conflict improved, with fewer fatalities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, than the year prior.
The report says, "The improvement in both armed services personnel and military expenditure was particularly notable in some of the largest militaries in the world. Of the five countries with the largest total military expenditure -- United States, China, Saudi Arabia, India, and Russia -- all five had falls in their armed service personnel rates, and China, India, and the US also had a concurrent reduction in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP."
The report places India alongside Philippines, Japan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan as having the highest risk of multiple climate hazards.
The report says, "China, Bangladesh, and India, score in the bottom half of the GPI and have significant exposure to climate hazards, with 393 million people in high climate hazard areas."
It warns, "Drought or the loss of arable land can lead to severe food insecurity and loss of livelihoods. Periods of drought in Kenya sparked clashes over water between pastoralists and farmers, and water shortages in India yielded conflicts between neighbouring states. Potential for larger interstate conflicts over resources that traverse borders, such as river basins, is also of concern."
---
Download full report HERE

Comments

TRENDING

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.  

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members.  As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.