 "As India's rank falls to 111, here's everything about Global Hunger Index")
India's ranking in the Global Hunger Index 2023 fell to 111 out of 125 countries from 107 in 2022. The index, released on Thursday, also 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, India has a level of hunger that is "serious". India's neighbouring countries Pakistan (102nd), Bangladesh (81st), Nepal (69th) and Sri Lanka (60th) fared better than it in the index.
South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara are the world regions with the highest hunger levels, with a GHI score of 27 each, indicating serious hunger.
"India has the highest child wasting rate in the world, at 18.7 per cent, reflecting acute undernutrition," the report based on the index stated. Wasting is measured based on children's weight relative to their height.
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.
The government, however, rejected the index, calling it a flawed measure of "hunger" that does not reflect India's actual position.
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The Women and Child Development Ministry said the index suffers from "serious methodological issues and shows a malafide intent".
What is the Global Hunger Index?
Global Hunger Index is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels. It is released by the Alliance2015, a network of seven European non-government organisations engaged in humanitarian and development action.
The index captures three dimensions of hunger: insufficient availability of food, shortfalls in the nutritional status of children and child mortality (which is, to a large extent, attributable to undernutrition).
It, accordingly, includes three equally weighted indicators: the proportion of people who are food energy-deficient, as estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the prevalence of underweight in children aged under five years, as compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the mortality rate of children aged under five years, as reported by UNICEF.
A regression analysis of the global hunger index on GNI per capita is performed to identify countries that are notably better or worse off with regard to hunger and undernutrition than would be expected from their GNI per capita. Countries are ranked on a 100-point scale, with 0 and 100 being the best and worst possible scores, respectively.
What does GHI 2023 say about the world?
The 2023 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that, after many years of advancement up to 2015, progress against hunger worldwide remains largely at a standstill. The 2023 GHI score for the world is 18.3, considered moderate and less than one point below the world's 2015 GHI score of 19.1.
Furthermore, since 2017, the prevalence of undernourishment, one of the indicators used in the calculation of GHI scores, has been on the rise, and the number of undernourished people has climbed from 572 million to about 735 million.
(With agency inputs)