Global indices measure countries against each other on everything from ease of doing business to press freedom, and India’s rankings on these measures tell a genuinely mixed story rather than a uniform trend in either direction. This article compiles the major indices side by side.
Ease of Doing Business
India rose from 142nd in 2014 to 63rd in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report, a jump frequently cited by the government as a major reform achievement. However, the index itself was discontinued in September 2021 after a World Bank internal audit found evidence that senior leadership had pressured staff to manipulate data for certain countries, including China, in the 2018 and 2020 editions, according to the World Bank’s own statement on the matter. This means India’s improvement, while real by the index’s own numbers at the time, never received a final, independently confirmed ranking before the metric was scrapped entirely.
Global Innovation Index
India’s ranking on the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index has shown consistent improvement, moving from around 81st in 2015 and 66th in 2016 up to 39th in 2024 and 38th in 2025, according to WIPO’s published data, a genuine multi-year climb the government’s own policy body, NITI Aayog, has repeatedly cited as evidence of strengthening innovation infrastructure.
World Press Freedom Index
India’s ranking on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index has moved in the opposite direction, falling to 151st of 180 countries in 2025 and further to 157th in 2026, according to the organisation’s published data. Reporters Without Borders has described India’s media environment since 2014 as having entered what it calls an “unofficial state of emergency,” citing factors including media ownership consolidation, most notably businessman Gautam Adani’s 2022 acquisition of NDTV, the use of sedition and defamation laws against journalists, and reported journalist killings. The Indian government has consistently disputed the index’s methodology as biased.
Global Hunger Index
India’s absolute Global Hunger Index score has actually improved over the long run, from 38.1 in 2000 to 29.3 in 2016 to 25.8 in 2025, according to the index’s publishers, Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, placing it in the “serious” category. However, its relative rank, 102nd of 123 countries in 2025, has often looked worse than this improving score suggests, partly because several neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal, are ranked ahead of India on the same index. The Indian government, through NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Women and Child Development, has repeatedly and publicly rejected the index’s methodology, arguing it relies on extrapolated child wasting and stunting data from limited surveys rather than direct hunger measurement.
Economic Size Ranking
India’s position by nominal GDP size has climbed steadily, surpassing the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, a milestone various reports place around 2019 to 2022 depending on the specific data vintage used. In April 2025, India briefly overtook Japan to claim fourth place in nominal GDP terms, according to IMF-based reporting, though by 2026 projections it sits closer to sixth place nominally while ranking third globally, behind only the United States and China, when measured by purchasing power parity.
Other Notable Indices
India’s Human Development Index ranking stood at 130th as of the most recent data, in the UNDP’s “medium” development category, a modest long-run improvement that still leaves India below the “high” tier. On the Corruption Perceptions Index, published by Transparency International, India scored 39 out of 100, ranking 91st of 182 countries in 2024, a one-point improvement from the year before. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index has shown essentially no meaningful movement, with India’s score at 0.6455 in 2014 compared to 0.644 in 2025, ranking 131st of 148 countries, indicating stagnation on this specific measure over the entire decade despite improvement elsewhere.
Bottom Line
India’s global rankings since 2014 tell a genuinely mixed picture rather than a simple story of universal improvement or decline: strong, sustained gains on the Global Innovation Index and a widely cited but ultimately discredited Ease of Doing Business jump, alongside a clear decline on the Press Freedom Index and near-total stagnation on the Gender Gap Index, a pattern worth reading in full rather than through any single favourable or unfavourable statistic in isolation.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available international index data and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India or any index-publishing organisation named above.
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