India ranks 105th in Global Hunger Index 2024, labelled as 'serious'

Indian Economic System(CSC) Growth and development

13-Oct-24

Context: The Global Hunger Index (GHI), a tool used by international humanitarian agencies to measure and track hunger levels with GHI scores based on under-nourishment and child mortality indicators across 127 countries, has ranked India 105th, which places it under the “serious” category of the analysis.

Key highlights

The 2024 report, now in its 19th edition, is published this week by Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide and German aid agency Welthungerhilfe to highlight that hunger levels will remain high in many of the world's poorest countries for several decades in the absence of more progress in measures to tackle the issue.
Globally, around 733 million people face hunger each day due to a lack of access to a sufficient amount of food, while about 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.
Some of the African nations are on the extreme ends of the GHI spectrum under the "alarming" category, with wars in Gaza and Sudan being highlighted as having led to exceptional food crises.
Conflict and civil strife are also generating food crises elsewhere, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Mali and Syria.

Background

India was ranked 111th among 125 countries in the year 2023 and 107th among 121 countries in the year 2022.

Neighbouring Countries Performance

In this index of the year 2024, Nepal is at number 68, Sri Lanka at 56 and Bangladesh at 84. That is, the condition of these countries is better than us.
Pakistan's ranking is 109.
22 countries including China, UAE and Kuwait are ranked first in this index.

India's Performance

India is among 42 countries that fall within the “serious” category, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan, with other South Asian neighbours such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka showing better GHI scores to be listed under the “moderate” category.
With a score of 27.3 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index, India has a level of hunger that is serious, reads the index entry.
India's GHI Score is based on the values of four component indicators: 13.7 per cent of the population is undernourished, 35.5 per cent of children under five are stunted with 18.7 per cent of them being wasted, and 2.9 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday, the report notes.

Global Hunger Index (GHI)

It gives information about the situation of hunger in the countries.
It is published keeping in mind United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) to achieve “Zero Hunger” by 2030.
Its list is prepared every year by a European NGO called Concern Worldwide and World Hunger Help (Welthungerhilfe in Germany).
It is prepared after assessing 4 parameters in different countries around the world.
In this index, countries which have a low GHI score also have a low ranking, which means people there are less hungry.

How is the GHI score calculated?

The GHI score of each country is calculated on 4 parameters of 3 dimensions.
Undernourishment (1)
Infant mortality rate (2)
Child undernutrition
Child wasting (3)
Child stunting (4)
All these three dimensions are given a standard score of 100 points.
In this score, Undernourishment, infant mortality rate and child undernutrition account for one-third each.
On the score scale, 0 is the best score, while 100 is the worst.

Undernourishment:

A healthy person does not get the required calories for the whole day.

Infant mortality rate:

The number of children per thousand births who die within 5 years of birth.

Child undernutrition:

It falls into 2 categories-
1) Child wasting:
The child is very thin or weak for his age.
Children below 5 years of age whose weight is less than their height.
This shows that those children did not get enough nutrition and hence they became weak.
2) Child stunting:
Children whose height is less than their age.
Height is directly related to nutrition.