Topics Covered: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.
Global Terrorism Index (GTI)
What to study?
For Prelims: GTI- rankings, database and latest report highlights.
For Mains: Concerns expressed by India.
Context: Niti Aayog has questioned Australian institute’s terror ranking of India in its Global Terrorism Index of 2019.
It has questioned the methodology adopted to rank India as the seventh worst terrorism affected country ahead of conflict-ridden countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Palestine and Lebanon.
It also questions the opaque funding of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
What’s the issue?
India has moved to the seventh position from the previous year’s eighth in the annual Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2019. The countries ahead of it are Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Pakistan and Somalia.
- Following this, in March, the Cabinet Secretariat asked Niti Aayog to track 32 such global indices to see how they could help drive reforms and growth.
- It is because the positioning in the global indices impacted investments and other opportunities.
About Global Terrorism Index:
- The GTI report issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) is based primarily on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, besides other sources.
- The index provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism since 2000. It produces a composite score in order to provide an ordinal ranking of countries on the impact of terrorism.
- The GTI is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.
What GTI rankings matter?
GTI scores are directly used in the Global Peace Index, the Global Slavery Report published by the Walk Free Foundation, and indirectly used in computing country scores in the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness and Global Competitiveness Indices and compilation of Safe Cities Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Insta Links:
Prelims Link:
- Who releases GTI?
- Who releases GTD?
- How are countries ranked?
- India’s ranking comparison?
Sources: the Hindu.
