India is ranked at the ninth position in crony-capitalism with crony sector wealth accounting for 3.4 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). In India, the non-crony sector wealth amounts to 8.3 per cent of the GDP, as per the latest crony-capitalism index. In the 2014 ranking also, India stood at the ninth place.

• Using data from a list of the world’s billionaires and their worth published by Forbes, individuals are labeled as crony or not based on the source of their wealth.
• Germany is the cleanest, where just a sliver of the country’s billionaires derives their wealth from crony sectors.
• Russia fares worst in the index, wealth from the country’s crony sectors amounts to 18 per cent of its GDP.
• The index ranked Russia as the worst crony-capitalist country, followed by Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Ukraine, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey above India. Taiwan and China are ranked 10th and 11th after India.
• Among the 22 economies in the index, crony wealth has fallen by $116 billion since 2014.
• The past 20 years have been a golden age for crony capitalists-tycoons active in industries where chumminess with government is part of the game. Their combined fortunes have dropped 16 per cent since 2014.
• Worldwide, the worth of billionaires in crony industries soared by 385 per cent between 2004 and 2014 to $2 trillion.

Among the 22 countries in the updated index, Germany is the cleanest with least number of crony capitalists, ranking at the bottom of the index, while China has the biggest concentration of crony wealth in the world at $360 billion. The study suggested that since globalisation had taken off in the 1990s, there had been a surge in billionaire wealth in industries that often involve cosy relations with the government, such as casinos, oil and construction.