In a statement, the Center said that “a sustained attempt to malign India’s image is again visible… Misinformation is a hallmark of the Global Hunger Index (GHI) released annually and indicates clear bias.” “. It listed out various measures taken by the government to ensure food security.
10 main criticisms of GHI exposed by India:
- Three of the four indicators used to calculate GHI are related to children’s health and may not be representative of the entire population. It is neither scientific nor rational to calculate hunger based primarily on indicators related to children’s health indicators.
- The government said the fourth and most important indicator is the ‘estimate of the proportion of the undernourished (PoU) population’ based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000.
- The report lowers India’s rank based on India’s POU value, which is estimated at 16.3%. The estimate is based on the ‘Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)’ survey module conducted through the Gallup World Poll, an “opinion survey” based on “8 questions” with a sample size of only “3,000 respondents”.
- Data collected from a small sample for a country the size of India has been used to calculate the POU value for India which is not only wrong and unethical, but also indicates a clear bias.
- The government said the issue on the use of such estimates based on the FIES survey module was raised in July 2022 as statistical output from such data would not be on merit.
- Some of the questions asked by the respondent in the FIES survey are: “During the past 12 months, was there a time when, due to lack of money or other resources: You were worried that you would not have enough food to eat? Did you eat less than that?” It is clear that such questions do not seek facts based on relevant information about nutritional support and assurance of food security by the government.
- The per capita dietary energy supply in India, as estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization, has been increasing year on year due to the increase in the production of major agricultural commodities in the country over the past few years and any reason for the country’s undernutrition. Not there. The level should go up.
- The government is running the world’s largest food security program PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana. This scheme has been extended till December 2022.
- Under Anganwadi services, since the COVID-19 pandemic, about 7.71 crore children up to 6 years of age and 1.78 crore pregnant women and lactating mothers have been provided supplementary nutrition.
- Under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, more than 1.5 crore registered women were provided Rs 5,000 for wage support and nutritious food during pregnancy and post-delivery period on the birth of their first child.
India’s hunger level ‘severe’
GHI measures and tracks hunger globally as well as by region and country. It is published annually by Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s largest aid and humanitarian agency, and Welthungerhilfe, one of Germany’s largest private aid organisations.
It is based on four indicators – undernourishment, wasting (low weight for height), stunting (low height for age) and mortality under five years of age.
Since 2014, India’s performance on stunting and infant mortality has improved significantly. However, as per GHI data, the wastage and undernutrition graph shows a slight upward trend.
A score below 9.9 is considered ‘low’, 10-19.9 ‘moderate’, 20-34.9 ‘severe’, 35-49.9 ‘dangerous’ and above 50 as ‘very dangerous’.
With a score of 29.1, the hunger level in India has been termed as “severe”.
India has slipped 6 places from its 2021 ranking of 101 with a score of 28.2 (among 116 countries).
Most of India’s neighbors, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan, fared better in the 2022 rankings. China, with a score of less than 5, topped the chart along with 16 other countries.
(with inputs from agencies)watch Global Hunger Index 2022: India down 6 places to 107th, China tops the list