niyati goyal:
India has slipped to the 107th position in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) in 2022, down from the 101st position in 2021. Of the 121 countries on the Global Hunger Index, India (107) is ranked behind its neighbours Nepal (81), Pakistan (99), Sri Lanka (64), and Bangladesh (84).
The GHI, which lists countries by ‘severity’, has given India a score of 29.1, which falls in the ‘serious’ category of hunger level. It is based on four indicators — under-nourishment, wasting (low weight for height), stunting (low height for age) and under-five mortality. A score of 9.9 or less is considered “low” risk, 35-49.9 as “alarming” and above that “extremely alarming.” Since 2014, India’s performance has improved significantly on stunting and infant mortality. However the graphs for wasting and undernourishment have shown a small upward trend, according to GHI data.According to the report, “India’s child wasting rate, at 19.3 per cent, is the highest of any country in the world and drives up the region’s average owing to India’s large population.”
Former finance minister P Chidambaram of the Congress lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after publication of the report, while stating that 22.4 crore people in India are undernourished. “Three out of the four indicators used for calculation of the index are related to health of Children and cannot be representative of the entire population,” says the press statement issued by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. This is the second year in a row the government has rejected the GHI rankings. Most of India’s neighbours, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan- have fared better in the 2022 rankings. China, with a score of less than 5, has topped the chart, together with 16 other countries.The situation in four countries- Burundu, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria- has been categorised as “extremely alarming.”