Disgracefully India is among the least peaceful places in the world

Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 The Hindu by Narayan Lakshman

Washington: India is among the least peaceful of major countries in the world and is getting even less peaceful year on year. This was the major finding of the Global Peace Index Report (GPI), an annual publication by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a think tank focused on researching the relationship between economics, business and peace.

According to the 2010 report, which considered a range of peace-related variables among 149 countries, India's rank was 128, six ranks lower than its 2009 position.

Some of India's key neighbours in South Asia ranked in the bottom 20 per cent along with India — Sri Lanka was ranked 133rd, Pakistan 145th and Afghanistan 147th. However, Nepal did much better, ranked in 82nd place and Bangladesh in 87th. Bhutan, ranked at 36th, narrowly missed being in the top 20 per cent of nations.

Commenting on the results the IEP said, “South Asia saw the greatest decrease in peacefulness, as a result of increased involvement in conflicts, a rise in deaths from internal conflict and human rights abuses. It added, “The main countries experiencing decreases in peacefulness were India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.”

The report's authors also observed that, overall, the world became “slightly less peaceful in the past year,” adding that in some nations, an intensification of conflicts and growing instability appears to be linked to the global economic downturn in late 2008 and early 2009.

While most developed countries including those of Western Europe and Canada, ranked in the top 20 per cent of peaceful nations, the United States was an anomaly, ranking at 85th, outranked by countries such as Rwanda, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

India also ranked 19th out of 25 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The leader in the region, New Zealand, was also the most peaceful nation globally. Close on its heels were Iceland and Japan. Iraq was estimated to be the least peaceful, accompanied at the bottom of the table by Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan.

The identification and weighting of indicators in the GPI, which is compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, was undertaken by an international panel of experts in the study of peace.

“How peaceful a country is depends on the internal structures, institutions, and attitudes that sustain and promote peace as well as on external factors,” said Clyde McConaghy, board director of the IEP.
India among least peaceful places in world

Moderator Comment
Citizens in India are not safe including the tourists. This is obvious from media reports of rape, kidnap, murder, criminals let loose, criminal councillors/ politicians, fakes right from medicines to currency, corrupt bureaucracy, money laundering, black money and criminalisation of citizens by the state. The list of atrocities on citizens by the bureaucracy and criminals is endless!
Only Politicians are safe because they are protected by NSG like security personnel. Common citizens have no protection at all as it is illegal to own guns for self defence. The Nation urgently requires Police and Judicial reforms if we need to redeem our status in the comity of civilised Nations. The bureaucracy has made mockery of our Democracy for the last 63 years. The GDP and economic growth are no indicators of our sordid decline in human values and glaring and squalid poverty of the large majority of our citizens.