India, July 15 -- India ranks 176th in the 2026 Environment Performance Index. Is the index unfair, or is the country failing to confront its environmental crisis?

India has once again landed near the bottom of the global Environment Performance Index (EPI), ranking 176th out of 177 countries in the 2026 edition, ahead only of Laos. With a score of 22.46, against table-topper Estonia's 74.79, the headline is stark. But is it fair to call India one of the world's most pollution-hit nations, or is this simply an artefact of a flawed ranking system, as New Delhi has argued before?

The honest answer is that both things can be true at once. The EPI's methodology has genuine limitations - it shifts across editions, making year-on-year compari...