India emerges as 14th most charitable country in the world

World Giving Index 2021 report says, India is 14th most charitable country. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown ‘giving’ trends across the world. Released by the Charities Aid Foundation’s (CAF), this year’s survey highlights the impact of lockdowns on charitable giving.

India is now in the Top 20 most generous countries in the world. This is up from the 10-year global rank of 82. Australia and New Zealand, where the survey was undertaken in the weeks before the first wave of the pandemic took hold, maintained their top 10 rankings. Communities around the world mobilised to help fellow citizens during the pandemic, resulting in the highest ‘helped a stranger’ figures since 2009.

More than half (55 per cent) of the world’s adults – or 3



billion people – reported helping someone they didn’t know in 2020. The report says, Scores for India rapidly improved between 2017 and 2019, and this improvement was maintained during 2020. The improvement in India is seen across all the age groups and amongst both men and women. 61 per cent of Indians helped strangers; 34 per cent volunteered; and 36 per cent donated money.

Meenakshi Batra, Chief Executive of CAF India said, it is commendable to see India perform well on the Index. Our correspondent reports, the WGI is a global survey, which has interviewed more than 1.6 million people since 2009. It asks each of them three questions: have they helped a stranger, given money, or volunteered for a good cause over the past month.