India, coming in at ninth place, now compares with Australia.

It's one ranking where the government won't complain about scoring less.

The Economist's latest index of crony capitalism estimates crony wealth in India at 3% of GDP, against 18% in 2008, when cronyism was at its peak internationally. India, coming in at ninth place, now compares with Australia, instead of competing with Russia eight years ago.

Whether its Xi Jiping's "crackdown against corruption" in China or PM Modi "trying to subject the economy to a blast of competition", governments are initiating a clean-up everywhere, says The Economist. It also cites pressure from the middle class, reflected in the election of Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi.

‘Indian government has got tough on graft’

The fall in commodity prices, weak currency and stocks in emerging markets and the end of the property boom in Asia seem to have led to a global reduction in crony wealth, says The Economist.

The magazine quotes the example of liquor baron Vijay Mallya's "fight against deportation to India" to the arrest of a construction company's executives in Brazil in a corruption scandal involving Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, to illustrate how pressure is mounting on those who benefited from the opaque ways in which the state functioned.

Referring to India, the Economist said, "A slump in commodity prices has obliterated the balance sheets of its Wild West mining tycoons. The government has got tough on graft, and the central bank has prodded state-owned lenders to stop giving sweetheart deals to moguls. The pin-ups of Indian capitalism are no longer the pampered scions of its business dynasties, but the hungry founders of Flipkart, an e-commerce firm."

While the Modi government has initiated several steps to bring about transparency, including auction of telecom spectrum and mining rights, the Economist warned that the gains could be tough to sustain. To begin with, the wealth of crony capitalists could rise as commodity prices rise.

Globally, crony billionaire wealth was estimated at $1.75 trillion, 16% lower than the estimate in 2014. The fall is led by emerging markets, where its share in GDP has decreased from 7% to 4%. "The mix of wealth has been shifting away from crony industries and towards cleaner sectors, such as consumer goods," the magazine said.

Germany was the cleanest in the world, with just a few of the country's billionaires deriving their wealth from crony sectors. Russia fared the worst, with wealth from crony sectors amounting to 18% of its GDP. Following Russia on the list were Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

