New Delhi: India today rubbished the Global Hunger Report 2022 which ranked the country at 107 among 121 nations of the world. India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development termed the report a part of a “consistent effort” to “taint India’s image as a nation that does not fulfil the food security and nutritional requirements of its population”.
The Global Hunger Report 2022 was released by Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, Non-Government Organisations from Ireland and Germany respectively. It placed India below other South Asian nations including Sri Lanka (64), Nepal (81), Bangladesh (84) and Pakistan (99) in the listing. India’s position slipped from the 2021 ranking of 101 out of 116 countries. In 2020, India’s ranking was 94 among 107 nations. With a score of 29.1, India’slevel of hunger was “serious”, the report said.
Claiming that misinformation seemed the hallmark of the annually released Global Hunger Index, the Ministry said the Index was an “erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues”. It pointed out that three out of the four indicators used for the calculation of the index were related to the health of children and claimed that they “cannot be representative of the entire population”. “Calculating hunger based mainly on indicators relating to health indicators of children is neither scientific nor rational,” it added. The fourth and “most important” indicator estimate of the Proportion of the Undernourished (PoU) population, the Ministry claimed, was based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3000.
“The report, India claimed, was not only disconnected from ground reality but also chooses to deliberately ignore efforts made by the Government to ensure food Security for the population, especially during the Covid Pandemic.
“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 the “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 minuscule sample for a country of India’s size through FIES has been used to compute PoU value for India which is not only wrong and unethical, but it also reeks of obvious bias,” the Ministry stated. It accused the publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, of not having done their “due diligence” before releasing the report.
The Ministry said the matter was taken up with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, not to use such estimates based on FIES survey module data in July 2022 as the statistical output of the same will not be based on merit. “Though an assurance was forthcoming that there will be further engagement on this issue, the publication of the Global Hunger Index report irrespective of such factual considerations is regrettable,” the Ministry stated.
The Ministry further pointed out that 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”.
– global bihari bureau
