New Delhi: The Union government on Friday said it was “shocking” that India’s rank was “lowered” on the Global Hunger Index and called the methodology used for rankings “unscientific”.
India slipped to 101st position in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2021 out of 116 countries, from its 2020 position of 94th out of 107th. It is now behind its neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Reacting to the report, the Women and Child Development Ministry expressed shock at what it claimed was a “lowering” of India’s rank on the basis of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s estimate on the proportion of undernourished population. The Indian government said it found the report to be “devoid of ground reality and facts, and suffers from serious methodological issues”.
“The publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hungerhilfe, have not done their due diligence before releasing the report,” the ministry said in a statement.
The methodology used by FAO is “unscientific”, the ministry further claimed.
“They have based their assessment on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which was conducted telephonically by Gallup. There is no scientific methodology to measure undernourishment like availability of food grains per capita during the period. The scientific measurement of undernourishment would require measurement of weight and height, whereas the methodology involved here is based on Gallup poll based on pure telephonic estimate of the population,” it said.
The ministry further said that the report “completely disregards the government’s massive effort to ensure food security of the entire population during the COVID-19 period”, verifiable data on which are available, it claimed.
Writing for The Wire in March 2021, researcher Sujata Gothoskar had commented critically on reports of the Niti Aayog’s paper, arguing for lowering coverage in the food security law in order to cut the subsidy bill. “The paper prescribes curtailment of food subsidy to people from 75% in rural areas and 50% in urban areas to 60% and 40% respectively. This curtailment, the Niti Aayog estimates, will result in savings of Rs 47,229 crore,” Gothoskar noted, comparing the proposed policy with the reality of crushing hunger faced during the pandemic and lockdown.
“The opinion poll does not have a single question on whether the respondent received any food support from the government or other sources. The representativeness of even this opinion poll is doubtful for India and other countries,” the ministry has additionally said on the ranking.
The government’s reaction to the rankings come in spite of the fact that partial results from the National Family Health Survey round 5 (NFHS-5) released in December 2020 had already drawn attention to the crisis of malnutrition in the country on the basis of data released on 17 states and five Union Territories.
“Given the economic slowdown and stagnation in wages of the poor over the last few years, the NFHS-5 results are most likely an indication of the fact that people’s ability to access good quality nutrition has reduced,” Ambedkar University professor Dipa Sinha had noted in her piece on The Wire.
In June 2021, the World Economic Forum, too, had noted that COVID-19 has exacerbated hunger and poverty worldwide, especially in India.
“The pandemic is becoming a nutrition crisis, due to overburdened healthcare systems, disrupted food patterns and income loss, along with the disruption of programmes like the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and the mid-day meal,” the paper said.
The government, meanwhile, said it noted “with surprise, from the FAO report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021′, that other four countries of this region, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, have not been affected at all by pandemic induced loss of job/business and reduction in income levels”.
The ministry said that these countries were rather able to improve their position on the indicator ‘proportion of undernourished population’ by 4.3%, 3.3%, 1.3% and 0.8% points respectively during the period 2018-20 over 2017-19.
According to this report, India’s position on the first indicator, child mortality, has improved in 2021 compared with 2020. Position on two indicators, i.e., child wasting and child stunting, has remained unchanged in 2021 compared with 2020, the ministry added.
The Indian government’s reaction to the country’s rank comes within months of a news report on Hindustan Times in August in which the government’s reported intention to engage with agencies conducting studies for international rankings was noted.
Additionally, the report quoted government officials who had requested to remain anonymous as having said that the government is monitoring fields “with the view of improving India’s rankings on global barometers, including the Democracy Index.”
(With PTI inputs)
