The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023 was jointly released by two international humanitarian organisations, Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and Concern Worldwide on October 12, 2023. India has been ranked 111 among 125 countries, which means that it has slipped four positions as compared to 2022 GHI.
About Global Hunger Index
The GHI, an annual peer-reviewed publication, aims to track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, reflecting multiple dimensions of hunger over time. Every year, GHI scores are calculated and released by these organisations to help assess the progress and setbacks in combating hunger. The GHI provides a way to compare the levels of hunger between countries and regions and intends to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger. This index provides information about those areas of the world where hunger levels are at the peak and where there is a need for additional effort for eliminating hunger.
Understanding Hunger
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines food deprivation or undernourishment, “as the habitual consumption of too few calories to provide the minimum dietary energy an individual requires to live a healthy and productive life, given that person’s sex, age, stature, and physical activity level”.
Calculation of the Index
The GHI uses four parameters (indicators) to calculate the index values of each country’s GHI score. It is calculated based on a formula that combines the following four indicators that together capture the multidimensional nature of hunger:
- Undernourishment The share of the total population of a country which has insufficient calorie intake.
- Child stunting The share of children who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.
- Child wasting The share of children under the age of five having low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition.
- Child mortality The share of children who die under the age of five years due to the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.
The effects of random measurement errors are minimised by combining the indicators. The four indicators are part of the indicator set used to measure the progress made towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score for each country is calculated on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger. According to the GHI index, ‘zero’ is the best possible score (no hunger) and ‘100’ is the worst. The GHI score for every country is classified by severity, i.e., from ‘low’ to ‘extremely alarming’.
Some Key Findings
According to the 2023 GHI, there has only been a little progress in reducing hunger on a global scale since 2015. The GHI score of the world in 2023 has been 18.3 which is considered ‘moderate’. The GHI score of 2023 is less than one point below the GHI score of 2015, which was 19.1. This indicates that only few countries have made a significant headway in reducing hunger.
Undernourishment has been on the rise since 2017. The prevalence of undernourishment has risen from 572 million in 2017 to about 735 million in 2023.
With the GHI scores of 27.0 each, South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara are the regions having the highest levels of hunger in the world, which is considered ‘serious’. Though these two regions had achieved considerable progress between 2000 and 2015, the progress has been stagnated since 2015, mirroring the trend seen for the world as a whole.
Hunger—‘serious’ or ‘alarming’ in 43 countries Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen are the nine countries that have ‘alarming’ levels of hunger. Thirty-four countries show that they are in ‘serious’ levels of hunger. Since 2015, hunger has increased in 18 countries with ‘moderate’, ‘serious’ or ‘alarming’ levels. With a ‘moderate’, ‘alarming’, or ‘serious’ level of GHI score, 14 countries have experienced a decline of less than 5 per cent between their 2015 and 2023 GHI scores. This shows that there has been insignificant progress during that period. In the present scenario, 58 out of the 125 countries are not expected to achieve ‘low’ hunger levels by 2030.
Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Zambia are the seven countries that have had ‘extremely alarming’ hunger levels in 2000. However, they have all made progress since then. Additionally, Bangladesh, Chad, Djibouti, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Nepal, and Timor-Leste are the seven countries that have achieved reduction of five points or more between their 2015 and 2023 GHI scores. Despite the current challenges faced by the world and the stagnation in hunger levels at the global level, these countries have shown reduction in the hunger levels, which is commendable.
Overlapping crises hamper progress in reducing hunger The COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine War, other coincidental crises, along with several violent conflicts and climate disasters around the world, have pushed some countries into food crises. However, at the same time, some countries have been able to improve upon their GHI scores. Low- and middle-income countries, which tend to be more vulnerable to crises, have been particularly hard hit as compared to high-income countries. State fragility, inequality, poor governance, and chronic poverty are some of the underlying factors that have deterred countries from recovering from setbacks. In the coming years, the world would be subjected to increased shocks due to various reasons including the results of climate change. Hence, countries should be prepared to face disasters effectively with an emphasis on food security.
Role of youth in transforming food system In the present scenario, younger generation who are entering into adulthood are subject to unequal and unsustainable food systems, which are unlikely to deliver sufficient food and nutrition security. Additionally, such food systems are highly vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation. Despite this, there is almost no participation of youth in the decision making of transformation of their food systems. It is the right of people to have healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods. As young people have the energy and innovation for making the food systems more sustainable, countries should engage their youth for transforming their failing food systems.
Vision beyond 2030 The current food systems, policies, and investments are failing to address the intergenerational cycle of hunger prevalent in many parts of the world. The solutions that are bound to be taken up should be in the long-term perspective, that is, beyond 2030, and should reflect young people’s livelihoods, options, and choices. As the right to food is central to food systems policies, programmes, and governance processes, people must be able to realise their right to food in ways that are socially, culturally and ecologically appropriate for their own local context. This shows why it is important to entrust responsibilities to capable youngsters and invest in their education, skill development, and health and nutrition. Governments must also provide non-discriminatory access to resources and economic and social programmes to youngsters without any gender bias. This would entail governments investing in diversified, locally appropriate agricultural production, and well-functioning markets that provide attractive livelihoods, better working conditions, and fair wages to young workers.
Global Hunger Index 2023 on India
India has been ranked 111th out of the 125 countries with a GHI 2023 score of 28.7, which has placed India’s level of hunger at ‘serious’.
Child stunting rate of India, as per the report, is at 35.5 per cent, its prevalence of undernourishment is at 16.6 per cent, its under-five mortality is at 3.1 per cent, and the child wasting value is at 18.7 per cent, which is the highest child wasting rate in the 2023 GHI report.
The GHI 2023 score for India was calculated based on the following GHI component indicators: undernourishment value for 2023 was based on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. Child mortality value was based on the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME) report 2023. The child stunting value and child wasting values were taken from India’s National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) (2019–2021) as reported in the joint child malnutrition estimates, titled Levels and Trends in Child Malnutrition (2023 edition).
The report stated that India has shown significant political will to transform the food and nutrition landscape. Some of the programmes include the National Food Security Act, Poshan Abhiyan (National Nutrition Mission), PM Garib Kalyan Yojna, and National Mission for Natural Farming. However, still much needs to be done to improve the GHI scores and ranking, and to address its high rates of child wasting and child stunting.
According to the report, India’s per capita dietary energy supply has increased over the years. However, the increase has been offset by the increase in the incidence of caloric losses at the retail distribution level, increased dietary energy requirements of the population, and an increased coefficient of variation. This has been the reason for the increase in the prevalence of undernourishment between 2016–18 and 2020–22.
The report further stated that in India specifically, the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative Malnutrition Collaborators have found that malnutrition was the predominant risk factor for death in children younger than five years of age in every Indian state in 2017. In 2017, India accounted for 68.2 per cent of the total under-five deaths. Malnutrition accounted for over two-thirds of the child deaths in India, exceeding the global average.
India’s Allegations
The Indian government has challenged the credibility of India’s ranking of 111/125 in the GHI 2023 Report. It has stated that it is an unreliable measure of hunger due to methodological deficiencies. On October 12, 2023, the Indian government has issued a statement stating that the methodology of the report preparation has been faulty and it has also raised concerns regarding the selection of the four parameters used to compile the report.
Further, three out of the four indicators used for the calculation of the index are related to the health of children and this could not be the representative for the entire population. Moreover, the fourth indicator ‘Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population’ has been based on the opinion poll conducted on a very small sample of 3000. The data on undernourishment has been taken from the SOFI report that was prepared by the FAO, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). As per the Government of India, the limited sample size and reliance on a constrained set of questions has made the GHI 2023 Report biased and has failed to capture the intricate nuances of India’s food situation. India has made considerable progress in augmenting per capita food availability. It has doubled from 800 gm in 1950 to 1.6 kg per person per day, at present. Additionally, export of food by India has also increased in quantity and was at USD 20.79 billion in 2020–21.
According to GHI 2023, India’s child wasting rate of 18.7 per cent has been the highest globally and child stunting rate of 35.5 per cent makes it the 15th highest in the world. These figures were from the NFHS-5 2019–21 data. On the contrary, the real-time data from the Ministry of Woman and Child Development’s Poshan Tracker states that child wasting rate is 7.1 per cent as of April 2023.
Indian government has stated that the data on stunting and wasting data was taken from a study that was undertaken between 1997 and 2003 by the World Health Organisation (WHO). It was based on primary growth data related information from approximately 8,500 children around the world. In India, the study covered affluent children from south India, who mostly belong to inhabited Punjabi families, and whose average height is significantly more than the children of the same age in Nagaland. This data does not have an accurate representation. Further, height and weight variability are not only evident between countries but also within India itself.
India’s under-five mortality rate has been 3.1 per cent. In India, diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections have been the primary cause for under-five mortality, rather than malnutrition and hunger.
Indian government has stated that considering these factors, the revised analysis highlights that India’s overall score should be 9.1, positioning India at the 48th rank in the GHI 2023 Report. Furthermore, India has a food surplus status and the country has implemented robust safety net programmes. India’s Public Distribution System has been serving more than 880 million people with free ration. Indian government also has taken various initiatives like the Integrated Child Services programme. For instance, the PM Poshan scheme aims to enhance the nutrition among pre-school and school-age children. Further, in conjunction with India’s economic growth along with these initiatives, it has presented a more optimistic view of the country’s food security situation than the GHI 2023 ranking of India.
India has urged the compilers of the report to critically re-evaluate their methods and data sources. Though the intent of the compilers may not be malicious, there are methodological errors and misinterpretations of the underlying data which has resulted in a biased GHI score for the country.
Though significant progress has been made by Indian government to eradicate hunger, there are still areas within the country where people go hungry and children suffer from malnutrition. The real challenge is to identify these specific areas and take immediate steps to fight hunger and malnutrition in all its forms.
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