India scores 39 out of 100 on the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index

What the score measures

The CPI does not count bribes, cases or convictions. It combines assessments and surveys of experts and business people about how corrupt they perceive a country's public sector to be. That makes it useful for comparing countries and following one country over time, but it is a measure of perception, not of proven wrongdoing.

Transparency International says scores from 2012 onwards are comparable year to year. India's score has stayed in a narrow band over that period — between 36 and 41.

A second, independent measure

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators include a separate estimate called Control of Corruption. It runs from about −2.5 (weak) to +2.5 (strong) and is built from a different set of sources. It is also an estimate, not a count.

What people say about paying bribes

Transparency International's India page also reports figures from its Global Corruption Barometer — Asia 2020, a survey of citizens rather than experts. In that survey, 89% of people in India said government corruption was a big problem, and 39% of those who had used a public service in the previous 12 months said they had paid a bribe. These are survey answers from 2020 and have not been updated since.

What this report does not do

None of these numbers says anything about any particular person, office or case. Allegations of corruption against individuals are decided by investigating agencies and courts; we report on individuals only on the record of those proceedings.

All charts on this page update automatically from their publishers. See India in Data for the full series and sources.