Global Hunger Index: India has slipped from its 94th position in 2020 to 101st position.
New Delhi:
The methodology used to calculate the Global Hunger Index – a peer-reviewed annual report across the world – is unscientific, the government claimed on Friday as India ranked 101 behind its neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. has gone.
“It is surprising to learn that the Global Hunger Report 2021 has downgraded India’s rank based on FAO’s (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) estimate on the proportion of the malnourished population, which found the ground reality and devoid of facts and suffering. The publication agencies of Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe have not done their due diligence prior to releasing the report,” the government said in a statement.
“The methodology used by the FAO is unscientific. They based their assessment on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which was conducted by Gallup over the telephone. There is no scientific method to measure undernutrition such as per se. Individual food availability. Scientific measurement of undernutrition would require measurements of weight and height, whereas the method involved here is based on a Gallup poll based on a pure telephonic estimate of the population.”
“The report completely disregards the massive effort of the government to ensure the food security of the entire population during the Covid period on which verifiable data is available. There is not a single question in the opinion poll whether the respondent should Or has there been any food support from others. Source. The representativeness of this opinion poll is also questionable for India and other countries.”
The Global Hunger Index website said on Thursday that India has slipped from the 94th position, while 18 countries, including China, Brazil and Kuwait, shared the top rank with the GHI score.
The report, jointly prepared by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organization Welt Hunger Hilfe, described hunger levels in India as “alarming”.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a press release)
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