Has Forbes Declared India as The Most Corrupt Asian Nation in 2023?

A graphic is being shared on the X platform (formerly Twitter) claiming that Forbes has released a report stating that India is the most corrupt country in Asia. The graphic states that Forbes has released a report which shows that after the Modi government came to power in 2014, India became the most corrupt Asian nation for the first time in the last 70 years. Corruption increased from 38% to 69%. The graphic also includes a tweet by Forbes declaring India the most corrupt country. (Archived link of the tweet)

जय श्री राम , बन गया काम….. pic.twitter.com/m9104xTFvP

— naresh sharma (@nareshsharma107) December 4, 2023

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Fact Check

In the first step of our research, we scrutinized through the X handle of Forbes to see if they had recently tweeted that India was the most corrupt country in Asia, but we were unable to find any such tweets. Nevertheless, after conducting a keyword search on X, we found that the tweet by Forbes attached in the graphic was made in the year 2017.

Asia's most corrupt countries:
1. India
2. Vietnam
3. Thailandhttps://t.co/JElXSD0DWV pic.twitter.com/mnko569jh7

— Forbes (@Forbes) November 19, 2017

Additionally, we looked for the keyword “Forbes declares India to be the most corrupt country” on Google and discovered a Forbes report. It was found that India was named the most corrupt nation in Asia by Forbes in 2017.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO, reported that 69 percent of Indians were involved in corruption, according to a Business Today report.

However, after becoming the most corrupt Asian nation, India improved its performance in 2018. In 2018, India scored 41 out of 100 and was ranked 78th in the list of 180 countries. Furthermore, India ranked 86th and 85th in the Global Corruption Index in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

In addition, we carried out further research to find the Asian nation with the highest level of corruption in 2022. Afghanistan was placed 150th out of 180 nations in Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) regarding corruption. Out of 100, Sri Lanka came in at number 23 and Azerbaijan at number 36. In contrast, Egypt and India were positioned at 30 and 40 out of the 100 countries. Last year, India was ranked at the 85th position out of 180 countries. The corruption report can be viewed by visiting the CPI website.

Lastly, it was revealed that the same graphic had also gone viral in the year 2018. So, to conclude, the graphic being shared is from 2017. India has done a better job of decreasing corruption in the recent several years. However, no country is corruption free, at the very least, it should be minimized.

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