India has been placed at the 111th spot out of 162 countries in the Human Freedom Index 2020, a worldwide ranking of civil, economic and personal freedom
In 2019 India ranked 94 on the index.
According to a report by Scrolll, India is ahead of China and Bangladesh, which ranked 129 and 139 on the 2020 index respectively. New Zealand, Switzerland and Hong Kong bagged the first three spots. Fred McMahon and Ian Vásquez, the authors of the report, said that they expected Hong Kong’s rank to decline in the future, because of China’s “aggressive interventions” in the region in 2019 and 2020.
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.
The index was published by American think tank Cato Institute and Fraser Institute in Canada. It takes into account 76 indicators of personal, civil, and economic freedoms to rank 162 countries from 2008 to 2018. The institutes noted that the world has seen a notable decline in personal freedom since 2008.
“Overall freedom has also declined, though to a lesser degree, over the same time period,” they said. “Of the 12 major categories that we measure in the report, all but five have seen some deterioration, with freedom of religion, identity and relationship freedoms, and the rule of law seeing the largest decreases.”
