India would have been ranked in the global top 10 if they polled people right after a three-course meal
Many people have expressed surprise at India’s poor rank in the Global Hunger Index (GHI). Many of them, in case you haven’t noticed, are people who eat four meals a day. These same people compensate for their gluttony by going on a diet after overeating for years. Their complete knowledge of hunger is derived either from the dieting yearning for pizza or from periodic ritual fasting for image management purposes. Their self-awareness is so low that it never occurs to them that even a single calorie consumed in excess of physiological necessity is food snatched from the tables of the authentically hungry people of India, assuming there is one. And yet, these shameless individuals have no hesitation in blaming the government for India’s appalling GHI score.
So, first of all, I would like to take this opportunity to condemn these people. Secondly, I want to draw your attention to a good news which most commentators have ignored in their obsession to show India in a negative light: India ranks above 15 countries. These include global superpowers such as Papua New Guinea, Chad, Burundi, Haiti, Madagascar and Somalia. To borrow a favorite phrase of our legal stalwarts, heaven will not fall if India stays at 101st for some time. Sure, that means we’re not the world’s No. 1 in fighting hunger. But it also means that we are not the worst. Let’s give credit to the government where it is due – we could have been Somalia but it is not.
Third, regardless of the fact that India’s rank is not as bad as it has been told, or as bad as it could be (116th), it is important to note that GHI’s methodology is rubbish. As the government has already pointed out, they have used an opinion poll to find out how many people are hungry in India. I personally don’t mind it. But then, GHI rigged the election in such a way that most people ended up saying they were hungry or that they were never going to eat again.
redundant method
For example, GHI approached a friend of mine for a telephone survey at 1.30 pm, just as he was about to sit down for lunch. When they asked him if he was hungry, he replied, “Absolutely!” Moments after the call, he had a three-course meal with sambar rice, rasam rice, and curd rice with murungakkai poriyal and vendakkai avial with chocolate brownie. Had he (and thousands like him) been approached after just 40 minutes, India would have been ranked in the top 10.
Subsequently, many Indians go hungry as a lifestyle choice. As a former chief minister of Gujarat rightly said, Indian girls are “more beauty conscious than health conscious”. They do not eat food for fear of getting fat. As proven by many scientific studies over the years, one of the biggest side effects of not eating is hunger. Is it fair to blame the government if Indians choose to starve for cosmetic reasons?
Then there are the hungry artists. India hosts the world’s most hungry artists, numbering 560.72 million according to the 2011 census. These are the people who read Franz Kafka’s iconic short story ‘A Hunger Artist’ at the age of 16 and decided to become a hungry artist themselves. They sit in a cage and fast for days and days in the hope that people will come and praise them. But the tragedy is that ordinary people, even hunger experts, such as those running the GHI, ignore them to tarnish India’s image.
date of starvation
One level below the professional hunger artist is the amateur – people who go hungry because they can’t find the food they love. Some of you may have such girlfriends. You plan a dinner date and take them to a nice restaurant, only to walk out of the restaurant without ordering anything. This is because she always starts a tedious interrogation from the waiter, asking the poor fellow if he can organize dish X without ingredients Y and Z, mixing spice A and vegetable B, but in the mix. Without allowing the element C to be too hard or too soft, ensuring that the creatures being served are lightly undercooked, but not so overcooked as to sit on the plate, look around, jump off the table, and the woods run away in His cooking is so demanding that the waiter either bursts into tears or inexplicably takes you to the door.
This happens three or four times in the evening. When your girlfriend achieves her goal of having dinner without food, you feel progressively hungry until, out of extreme desperation, you break the relationship and head for the bar. If you get a call from GHI pollster at this exact time, what do you think you’d say? Now imagine an entire opinion poll conducted with people in such situations. Is it any surprise that we are ranked 101st?
Yes. Sampath, author of this satire, editor of social affairs, in The Hindu.
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