Henley Passport Index 2019: Indian Passport Drops A Rank, Ends Up At 82nd Position

The Indian passport has dropped a rank to end at 82 in the latest global passport Index released by Henley & Partners.

The Henley Passport Index measures the strength of all the passports around the world, based on how many destinations can be accessed by the passport-holders of a specific country, without pre-departure visa application.

On October 1, 2019, Henley & Partners released their annual report on the global passport index.

The Rise And Fall Of The Indian Passport

BOOM reached out to Henley & Partners, who provided us the data on India's ranking and score in Henley Passport Index from 2014 - 2018.

India's ranking in the index saw a sharp drop between 2015 and 2017 (falling from 76 in 2014 to 88 in 2015). It rose to the position of 81 in 2018, while dropping a position in 2019 report, to 82nd position.

This is despite an increase in the number of destinations accessible to Indian passport holders without pre-departure visa. While the score in 2014 was at 51, it rose to 59 in 2019.

Since 2010, the Indian passport has considerably dropped in rank. In 2013, it hit the rank of 74, which was the highest position held in the past decade.

What About Our Neighbours?

BOOM also accessed the data on passport ranking and score for 4 other South Asian countries - Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.

Compared to other South Asian countries, Indian passport stands strong, with the Pakistani and Nepali passport featuring in the bottom 10 positions.

The Best And The Worst

The top ranking countries are as follows:

There is an overwhelming presence of European countries in the top 6 positions.

However, the first and second position includes three developed Asian countries - namely, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, while the United States ended up in the 6th position.

The following list contains the name of countries in the bottom 10 ranks:

Methodology

In an email to BOOM, a Henley & Partners (H&P) spokesperson explained that the aim of the Henley Passport Index (HPI) is to provide information to travellers on ranking of all the world's passports according to the number of destination their holders can access without a prior visa.

"The HPI surveys each passport against 227 destinations — including not only countries but also territories, micro-states, and so on (i.e. anywhere where someone might need to travel). In this respect, HPI differs from the other passport indexes, which only include countries and a handful of selected territories in their destination database. The methodology was expanded following input from the public, requesting that certain destinations be included," the spokesperson told BOOM over email.

The indexing is done by using data provided by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which is cross-checked by H&P using publicly available online sources against 227 possible travel destinations.

The score for each country denotes the number of destinations the passport holder of that country can visit without prior visa.