“Erroneous Index, Methodological Issues”: India On Global Hunger Report

New Delhi:

The Global Hunger Index continues to be a flawed measure of ‘hunger’ and does not reflect India’s true position, the government said in a statement today.

The Global Hunger Report 2023 released by Ireland non-profit Concern Worldwide and Germany’s Welt Hunger Hilfe ranked India at 111 among 125 countries.

“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 government said.

“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,” it said in the statement.

India has prioritised 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’ application as an important governance tool, the government said.

Several key international organizations such as UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank have acknowledged the ‘Poshan Tracker’ as a game-changer in the area of nutrition. The World Bank and UNICEF have collaborated closely with the ministry to support the operationalisation of the ‘Poshan Tracker’, the government said.

“Since April 2023, the measurement data of children under 5 years uploaded on 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 government said.

Two other indicators – 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 or 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, the government said.

The centre launched the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) with the specific purpose of ameliorating the hardships faced by the poor and needy due to economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in the country.