India has slipped four position as compared to last year. Among 125 countries all over the world India ranks in the 111th position in  in the Global Hunger Index report released by two European agencies on October 12, 2023. Timor-Leste, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Haiti, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Niger, Lesotho, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Madagascar, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Burundi and Somalia are the only countries ranking lower than India.

The Global Hunger Index released by Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, non-government organizations from Ireland and Germany respectively. which has ranked India even below its neighboring countries Pakistan (102th), Bangladesh (81st), Nepal (69th) and Sri Lanka (60th).

According to the report, India has the highest child ‘wasting’, which is considered to be the worst form and indicator of all forms of child under-nutrition. The child ‘wasting’ rate across the world, is at 18.7%, reflecting acute undernutrition If a country has more than 15% of the children ‘wasted’, it has been marked as ‘very high’ level of concern in the report. India is the only country, thus, where the wasting has been put in the category of ‘very high’.

Like it has done on previous occasions, The Indian government has rejected this report this year too. Issuing a statement on October 12, the government has termed the methodology of the report preparation faulty, and has raised concerns about the selection of the four parameters used.

The Government stated that, “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 3000,” the government claimed.

The Government also went on to make a rather unusual claim:  “There is hardly any evidence that the fourth indicator, namely, child mortality is an outcome of hunger,” it said. There is though a lot of other evidence to suggest hunger does lead to death in children in many ways.

“Malnourished children, particularly those with severe acute malnutrition, have a higher risk of death from common childhood illnesses such as diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria. Nutrition-related factors contribute to about 45% of deaths in children under 5 years of age,” says the World Health Organization.

Now, this data on ‘undernourishment’ has been taken from the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, also known as the SOFI report, prepared by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Children’s Fund and International Fund (UNICEF) and International Fund for  Agricultural Development (IFAD). (The Wire Reports)