The story so far: For the second time in two years, the Ministry of Women and Child Development on Saturday rejected the Global Hunger Index (GHI) that ranked India 107 among 121 countries. India was accorded a score of 29.1 out of 100 (with 0 representing no hunger), placing it behind Sri Lanka (66), Myanmar (71), Nepal (81) and Bangladesh (84). It referred to the index as “an erroneous measure of hunger”. It also wrongly claimed that the Index relied on an opinion poll.
What is the Global Hunger Index?
The GHI, is a peer-reviewed annual report that endeavours to “comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels”. It is jointly-produced by the Germany-based not-for-profit organisation Welthungerhilfe and Ireland-based Concern Worldwide. Authors of the report primarily refer to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) that endeavours to achieve ‘Zero Hunger’ by 2030. According to them, the report attempts to “raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger”. The inaugural report was first published in 2006. The 2022 report is its 17th edition.
The GHI score is computed using four broad indicators — undernourishment (measure of the proportion of the population facing chronic deficiency of dietary energy intake), child stunting (low height for age), child wasting (low weight for height) and child mortality (death of a child under the age of five).
Why these four metrics?
Before looking at the methodology, it is imperative to understand certain basic terminologies. Starting with ‘hunger’, it refers to the undesirable sensation caused by insufficient consumption of calories on a daily basis to lead a normal and healthy life. taking into account her/his age, sex, stature and physical activity. Undernutrition’ is the result of inadequate intake of food, which could be in terms of either quantity or quality, poor utilisation of nutrients due to infections or other illnesses. It could emanate from varied social or economic factors. And finally, U.S. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defines ‘malnutrition’ is defined as the abnormal physical condition caused by unbalanced or excessive intake of macronutrients and/or micronutrients. Imperative to understand here is chronic undernourishment is synonymous with hunger and undernutrition is a type of malnutrition.
Undernourishment, as per the authors, provides a basis to measure inadequate access to food and is among the lead indicators for international hunger targets, including the UN SDG 2. Child stunting and mortality, offers perspective about the child’s vulnerability to nutritional deficiencies, access to food and quality of nutrition. Since children (especially below five) are at a developmental age there is a greater and urgent requirement for nutrition with results particularly visible. This forms the basis of assessing nutritional requirement among children. Adults are at a sustainable age — they are not growing but rather subsisting on nutrition for healthy survival. And lastly, on the same rationale, child mortality indicates the serious consequences of hunger. Children are most vulnerable to hunger and thus any potential deficiency (of vitamins and minerals) is better captured.
What allegations are we looking at?
As per the Ministry for Women and Child Development, the report lowers India’s rank based on the estimates of the Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population. It elaborates that the U.S. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimate is based on the ‘Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)’ survey module conducted using the Gallup World Poll, that bears a sample size of 3,000 respondents being asked eight questions. It stated that the data represented a miniscule proportion for a country of India’s size. It countered the assertions in the report pointing to India’s per capita dietary energy supply increasing year-on-year due to enhanced production of major agricultural commodities in the country over the years.
The GHI website provides important clarifications on these points raised by the government. It explains that while FAO uses a suite of indicators on food security, including two important indicators — prevalence of undernourishment and prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity based on FIES — the GHI only uses the PoU obtained through food balance sheets based on data reported by member countries, including India. A food balance sheet provides a comprehensive picture of the pattern of a country’s food supply during a specified reference period. It lists down the source of the supply and its utilisation specific to each food category.
Also read: A reminder that India still trails in the hunger fight
On why the GHI uses three child-specific indicators out of the four to calculate hunger for a country’s population, the website explains, “By combining the proportion of undernourished in the population (1/3 of the GHI score) with the indicators relating to children under age five (2/3 of the GHI score), the GHI ensures that both the food supply situation of the population as a whole and the effects of inadequate nutrition within a particularly vulnerable subset of the population are captured.” In fact, a Senior Policy Officer at the GHI Laura Reiner said that, “All four indicators used in the calculation of the global hunger are recognised by the international community, including India, and used for measuring progress towards the UN SDGs.”
Why the controversy?
According to the Ministry, the report is not only disconnected from ground reality but also chooses to deliberately ignore the food security efforts of the Central government especially during the pandemic. The Union Cabinet through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojna (PM-GKAY), provisioned an additional five kg ration per person each month in addition to their normal quota of foodgrains as per the National Food Security Act. It was recently extended to December 2022. According to Professor of Economics at the Ambedkar University, Dipa Sinha, the schemes definitely helped ease the situation but fell short of being adequate.
However, according to her, given the unemployment, prices of food increasing and stagnant wage-levels, people are not eating what they should eat. In a separate context, she added that the pandemic-induced distress only added to an existing dimension and made it worse. “We have many other sources of data also which validate the fact that issue of hunger and malnutrition in India is one of concern,” she told The Hindu. It is important to note that the ranking cannot be used for any year-on-year comparison because countries of differing economic conditions are added for assessment each year. Thus, according to the Economics professor, it is imperative to take note of the position and the indicator analysis than the comparative year-on-year rank. “The issue is not that the rank has gone up or down, issue is that the rank is poor,” she stated.
- The GHI, is a peer-reviewed annual report that endeavours to “comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels”.
- As per the Ministry for Women and Child Development, the report lowers India’s rank based on the estimates of the Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population
- According to the Ministry, the report is not only disconnected from ground reality but also chooses to deliberately ignore the food security efforts of the Central government especially during the pandemic.
With inputs from Jagriti Chandra
