India has been ranked at 111 out of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023, further lowering its position to 107 (out of 121 countries) in 2022. However, the government has rejected the ranking, saying it is a flawed measure of “hunger” that does not reflect India’s true position.
The GHI 2023, released on Thursday, has also put India’s child wasting rate at 18.7 per cent highest in the world during 2018–22 and said it reflected acute undernutrition. The rate of undernourishment in India stood at 16.6 per cent and under-five mortality at 3.1 per cent. The report also said that the prevalence of anaemia in women aged between 15 and 24 years stood at 58.1 per cent.
The overall score for India has been put at 28.7 in the ranking, which is categorised as serious, according to the report.
The Global Hunger Index is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels. The scores are based on the values of four component indicators: undernourishment based on caloric intake, child (under age five) stunting based on height, child (under age five) wasting based on weight, and child mortality (before age five). Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger, where 0 is the best possible score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst.
India’s neighbouring countries, Pakistan (102), Bangladesh (81), Nepal (69th), and Sri Lanka (60), have fared better than them in the index.
Govt’s reaction
The Women and Child Development Ministry said the GHI 2023 report suffers from “serious methodological issues and shows a malafide intent.”
“The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. Three out of the four indicators used for the calculation of the index are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population. The fourth and most important indicator, “Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) Population,” is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000,” it said.
The ministry added that the percentage of child wasting, as seen on the Poshan Tracker, has been consistently below 7.2 per cent, month-on-month, as compared to the value of 18.7 per cent used for child wasting in the GHI 2023. Also, there is hardly any evidence that child mortality (one of four indicators) is an outcome of hunger, it said.