NEW DELHI: India has ranked fourth in a worldwide comparative assessment of national legal frameworks for right to information, slipping a rank as Mexico replaced Serbia to head the list of 112 countries this year and pushed each of last year’s top five countries a notch lower. Sri Lanka, at ninth spot, is the only other South Asian country to figure among top ten nations in the ratings released on Wednesday to mark International Day for Universal Access to Information.Developed by the Centre for Law and Democracy and Access Info Europe , the ratings are done on the basis of 61 indicators totalling up to 150 points to gauge a country’s legal framework.Mexico scored 136 points, edging past Serbia, which ended up with 135 points. RTI experts said India slipped one rank this year not because of its own performance but because of Mexico’s surge. “Mexico has recently revamped General Act of Transparency and Access to Public Information and has outranked Serbia. This is why India has slipped a rank,” said Venkatesh Nayak, prog ramme coord i n at o r at Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.All countries in South Asia , barring Pakistan, scored more than 100 points. Pakistan remains at 89th spot. As per the ratings, Arab countries are among the world’s weakest on this important human rights indicator, with only four of the 22 member states of the Arab League – Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen – having RTI laws. “The popular myth ‘RTI is meant for developed countries while developing countries have other urgent issues of poverty, hunger, poor levels of basic services like education and health’ stands disproved once again,” said Nayak.