Ranked 107, India slams 'erroneous' Global Hunger Index citing methodological issues

India ranked 107 out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2022 with its child wasting rate at 19.3 per cent, being the highest in the world

A day after India ranked 107 out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2022, the Modi government dismissed the ranking as misinformation and termed the ranking as a “consistent yet visible” effort to “taint” India’s image. This is the second year in a row that the government criticised the findings. The report is released by Irish and German NGOs Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe.

The Women and Child Development Ministry, in a statement, said the matter was taken up with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) not to use such estimates based on FIES (Food Insecurity Experience Scale) survey module data in July 2022 as the statistical output of the same will not be based on merit.

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The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development issued a statement against the ranking and said, “misinformation seems to be the hallmark” of the findings.

"The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. Three out of the four indicators used for calculation of the index are related to health of Children and cannot be representative of the entire population. The fourth and most important indicator estimate of Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3000,” the WCD ministry’s statement said.

The GHI measures and tracks hunger at global, regional, and national levels. As per the report, India has landed at a score of 29.1, and the level of hunger has been termed “serious”. India lags behind all it neighbouring countries barring Afghanistan which was ranked 109th. Pakistan (99), Bangladesh (84), Nepal (81) and Sri Lanka (64) ranked better than India. In 2021, India ranked 101 out of 116 countries while in 2020 the country was placed at 94th position.

The GHI’s findings showed that the child-wasting rate in India, at 19.3%, is the highest in the world.

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Taking a one-dimensional view, the report lowers India’s rank based on the estimate of the Proportion of the Undernourished (PoU) population for India at 16.3%. The FAO estimate is based on “Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)” Survey Module conducted through Gallop World Poll, which is an “opinion poll” based on “8 questions” with a sample size of “3000 respondents”. The data collected from a miniscule sample for a country of India’s size through FIES has been used to compute PoU value for India which is not only wrong & unethical, it also reeks of obvious bias,” the WCD ministry’s statement said.

Opposition leaders took aim at the Modi government over the report. CPI (M) secretary general Sitaram Yechury said on Twitter that the ranking is “disastrous” for India, while Congress leader P Chidambaram sent out a tweet saying that hate is not the antidote for hunger.

The government said it is evident such questions do not search for facts based on relevant information about the delivery of nutritional support and assurance of food security by the government.

The per capita dietary energy supply in India, as estimated by FAO from the Food Balance Sheets, has been increasing year-on-year owing to enhanced production of major agricultural commodities in the country over the years and there is absolutely no reason why the country's undernourishment levels should increase, the Centre said.

The ministry said the three other indicators apart from PoU, included in Global Hunger Index relate primarily to children viz. stunting, wasting and under 5 mortality.

"These indicators are outcomes of complex interactions of various other factors like drinking water, sanitation, genetics, environment and utilisation of food intake apart from hunger, which is taken as the causative/outcome factor for stunting and wasting in the GHI. Calculating hunger based on mainly indicators relating to health indicators of children is neither scientific nor rational,” it said.

(With PTI inputs)