India has fallen six places in the Global Hunger Index 2022 to rank 107 out of 121 countries ranked. India ranked behind all South Asian countries except war-torn Afghanistan. With a score of 29.1, the publishers of the Global Hunger Index – the European NGO Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe – described the level of hunger as “severe”.
The GHI score is based on the values of four sub-indicators – malnutrition, child stunting, child wasting, child mortality. While malnutrition represents the proportion of the population with insufficient caloric intake, childhood stunting indicates the proportion of children under five who are short for their age, reflecting chronic malnutrition. Child wasting reflects acute malnutrition in children under five who are underweight for their height.
The data used for the indicators come from various UN and other multilateral agencies, including Unicef, the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the report said. Neighboring Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar are ranked 99th, 64th, 84th, 81st and 71st respectively – all countries above India. As many as 17 countries were collectively rated between 1 and 17 with a score of less than five.
The countries ranked below India in the Global Hunger Index are – Zambia, Afghanistan, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Liberia, Niger, Haiti, Chad, Dem. Rep. Congo, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Yemen. For 15 countries – including Guinea, Mozambique, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria – a ranking could not be determined due to a lack of data, the report said.
Opposition leaders seized on the news and attacked the BJP-led central government. Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said India’s score had worsened since 2014 during the eight years of Modi’s rule. “Hindutva, imposition of Hindi and spreading hate is not an antidote to Hunger,” Chidambaram said in a tweet. Chidambaram’s son and Lok Sabha member Karti Chidambaram said on Twitter: “The BJP government will reject this and raid the organization that did the study.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the BJP was talking about creating a five trillion economy but 106 countries were “better than us in providing two meals a day”. “India cannot become number 1 without providing good education to every child,” he tweeted in Hindi. The central government rejected last year’s Global Hunger Index report, saying the issuing agencies had not done their “due diligence”.
“It is shocking to find that the Global Hunger Report 20201 has downgraded India based on FAO’s estimate of the proportion of the undernourished population, which has been found to lack ground reality and facts and to suffer from serious methodological problems. The publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, did not perform due diligence before publishing the report,” the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development said in a statement.
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