India ranked 107 out of 121 countries in 2022. This year, the GHI ranked Pakistan at 102, Bangladesh at 81, Nepal at 69 and Sri Lanka at 60. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were the regions with the highest hunger levels.

India reported the world’s highest child wasting rate of 18.7%, indicating acute undernutrition, as per the report released by the Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, non-government organizations from Ireland and Germany, respectively. In New Delhi, the ministry of women and child development said, “The GHI continues to be a flawed measure of hunger and does not reflect India’s true position. The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. Three out of the four indicators used for the 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 population (PoU), is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000.

Two other indicators, stunting and wasting, are outcomes of complex interactions of various other factors like sanitation, genetics, environment and utilization 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, namely child mortality, is an outcome of hunger.”

According to the government release, the proportion of child wasting, as seen on its Poshan tracker, has been consistently below 7.2% month-on-month, as compared to 18.7% in the Global Hunger Index 2023.

It said the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates PoU for India at 16.6%. “The FAO estimate is based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) survey conducted through Gallop World Poll which is an opinion poll based on 8 questions with a sample size of 3,000 respondents.”

“The data collected from a miniscule sample for a country of India’s size through FIES has been used to compute PoU value for India, which is not only wrong and unethical, but it also reeks of obvious bias.”

Owing to these “flaws”, FAO was asked not to use such estimates based on FIES survey data. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has planned a pilot survey on FIES in consultation with FAO, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare and the Department of Food and Public Distribution.

The Technical Group constituted for this purpose has suggested changes in the existing FIES module including questionnaire, sample design and sample size. However, despite the pilot survey being in process, the continued use of FAO’s FIES-based PoU estimate is “regrettable”, the release added.

The said it has government has prioritized several key activities to address the challenge of malnutrition under Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 (Mission Poshan 2.0). The Ministry of Women and Child Development developed and deployed the ‘Poshan Tracker’ ICT application as an important governance tool.

To date, more than 1.39 million Anganwadi centres are registered on the application, benefitting over 103 million beneficiaries, including pregnant women, lactating mothers, children under 6 years and adolescent girls.

The Poshan Tracker has incorporated WHO’s expanded tables, which provide day-based z-scores, to dynamically determine stunting, wasting, underweight, and obesity status based on a child’s height, weight, gender, and age. Anganwadi workers have been trained by medical professionals at the district level and through the World Bank, Bill Milinda & Gates Foundation, etc. to measure growth parameters in the Anganwadi Centres for which growth measuring devices have been provided in every Anganwadi of the country.

Additionally, the union government launched Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) to help the poor and needy due to economic disruptions amid the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. The allocation of free food grains under PMGKAY was in addition to normal allocation done under the National Food Security Act, 2013. A total quantity of approximately 111.8 million tonnes of food grains had been allocated under the scheme in 28 months for nearly 800 million beneficiaries.

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Updated: 12 Oct 2023, 10:55 PM IST