• India is ranked at 111 out of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023. The government rejected the GHI as erroneous and having malafide intent.

• India was ranked at 107 out of 121 countries in the 2022 edition of the Global Hunger Index (GHI).

• The GHI stated that India has the highest child wasting rate in the world at 18.7 per cent, reflecting acute undernutrition.

• With a score of 28.7 in the GHI 2023, India has a level of hunger that is “serious”.

• India’s neighbouring countries Pakistan (102), Bangladesh (81), Nepal (69) and Sri Lanka (60) have fared better than it in the index.

• According to the index, 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.

Why the govt rejects the report?

• The government rejected the index calling it a flawed measure of hunger that does not reflect India’s true position.

• The women and child development ministry said the index 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 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, the ministry said.

• Since April 2023, the measurement data of children under five years uploaded on the Poshan Tracker has consistently increased — from 6.34 crore in April 2023 to 7.24 crore in September 2023. 

• 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 Global Hunger Index 2023, the ministry said.

• The ministry further said two other indicators, namely stunting and wasting, are outcomes of complex interactions of various other factors like sanitation, genetics, environment and utilisation of food intake apart from hunger which is taken as the causative/outcome factor for stunting and wasting in the GHI.

• Also, there is hardly any evidence that the fourth indicator — child mortality — is an outcome of hunger, it said.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store