Well we might be doing something better than the likes of Turkey, Portugal, Israel, Russia, Mexico and South Africa to be placed at 22nd in a new survey that ranks the ‘World’s Best Countries’. Conducted jointly by University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, global brand consultants BAV Consulting and the U.S. News & World Report magazine, the results of the survey was released at the ongoing World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday. Germany tops the list followed by Canada, UK, US, Sweden, Australia and Japan. Singapore is ranked at 15, China at 17, Thailand at 20 and Brazil at 21.

More than 16000 people across 36 countries were surveyed for the ranking. 8000 of these were classified as `informed elites’ and 4500 top business people and entrepreneurs. The participants were queried on a set of 65 country attributes. “The more a country was perceived to exemplify a certain characteristic in relation to the average, the higher that country’s attribute score and vice versa,” the report says. “These scores were normalized to account for outliers and transformed into a scale that could be compared across the board.”

The attributes were then used to create nine sub-rankings categories classified under Adventure, Citizenship, Cultural Influence, Entrepreneurship, Heritage, Movers, Open for Business, Power and Quality of Life. Adventure refers to a country being “friendly, fun, pleasant climate, scenic and sexy”, while Citizenship is about whether a country’s “cares about human rights, cares about the environment, gender equality, progressive, religious freedom, respects property rights, trustworthy, well-distributed political power.”

India’s relative high ranking comes from its having topped the sub-ranking category of Movers, which refers to a country being “different, distinctive, dynamic, unique.” It is also placed a high 6th in the Heritage ranking, which is based on a country being “ culturally accessible, has a rich history, has great food, many cultural attractions.” Its negative markings come from categories like Citizenship, where it is placed at 39th, Adventure, where it is at 35th, and Open for Business where it ranks at a paltry 29th. Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, Ukraine and Algeria make up for the last five in the ranking. Pakistan just about making into the list because it ranks a high 16th in the `Power’ category, on account of the power wielded by its military in the country’s daily life.