What Government's Response To India's Global Hunger Index Ranking? (image:x.com/ARanganathan72)
New Delhi: The Union government dismissed the Global Hunger Index (GHI) as a “flawed measure” of ‘Hunger’ and stated that it does not reflect in India’s true position. While responding to CPI(M) MP K Radhakrishnan’s question in the Parliament, Minister of State Nimuben Jayantibhai Bambhaniye gave this answer. Referring to India’s 101st position out of the 116 countries in the GHI 2024 rankings, MP asked whether government is aware of the position and if so, what are details of action taken thereupon improve the situation. In the GHI rankings, India with a score of 27.3 is marked as “serious”.
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“The Global Hunger Index is a flawed measure of ‘Hunger’ and does not reflect India’s true position. Three out of four of its constituent indicators (namely, Stunting, Wasting and Child Mortality), which are used for calculation of the index, are related to health of children and cannot be taken to reflect hunger in the population,” Minister responded.
Continuing further, Minister said that considering the GHI 2023 Rankings where India stood at 111, there has been an improvement in India’s rank in 2024 and it majorly attributed to improvement in the fourth constituent indicator, Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU), of the Index.
“Government has accorded highest priority to the issue of malnutrition and is making serious efforts to address this issue,” Minister said. The activities under the Supplementary Nutrition Programme under Anganwadi Services and POSHAN Abhiyaan have been revitalised and merged as ‘Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0’ (Mission Poshan 2.0).
“It seeks to address the challenges of malnutrition in children, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers through a strategic shift in nutrition content and delivery and by creation of a convergent eco-system to develop and promote practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity,” Minister added.
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GHI is a peer-reviewed report, published annually by Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide and German aid agency Welthungerhilfe. It is a tool used by international humanitarian agencies to count and track hunger levels with GHI scores. The score is calculated on a 100-point scale based on four component indicators – undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality. As per the survey, India has the highest child wasting rate, 18.7%, on a global scale.
