Context: As per the Global Hunger Index 2020, India ranks 94 among 107 countries and is under serious category. 
Key Findings of the Report

• India ranks 94 out of 107 countries in the Index, lower than neighbours such as Bangladesh (75) and Pakistan (88).
• India performs worst in child wasting (low weight for height, reflecting acute undernutrition) and child stunting (low height for age, reflecting chronic undernutrition), which together make up a third of the total score.
• Child stunting has improved significantly, from 54% in 2000 to less than 35% now in India. 
• Child wasting, on the other hand, has not improved in the last two decades, and is rather worse than it was decade ago.
• India has improved in both child mortality rates, which are now at 3.7%, and in terms of undernourishment, with about 14% of the total population which gets an insufficient caloric intake.
• 14 percent of India’s population is undernourished. It also says that the country recorded a child stunting rate of 37.4 per cent.

Comparing with other country

• In the region of south, east and south-eastern Asia, the only countries which fare worse than India are Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and North Korea.
• Out of the total 107 countries, only 13 countries fare worse than India including countries like Rwanda (97), Nigeria (98), Afghanistan (99), Liberia (102), Mozambique (103), Chad (107) among others.
• In many countries the situation is improving too slowly, while in others it is worsening.
• For 46 countries in the moderate, serious, or alarming categories, GHI scores have improved since 2012, but for 14 countries in those categories, GHI scores show that hunger and undernutrition have worsened. 
• The latest GHI projections show that 37 countries will fail to achieve even low hunger by 2030.

About Sustainable Development Goal 2

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 aims to achieve “zero hunger”. It aims to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”.

The Goal has five targets to be achieved by 2030.

• Ensuring universal access to safe and nutritious food, ending all forms of malnutrition, doubling the productivity and income of small scale food producers, sustainable food production and resilient agricultural practices and maintaining the genetic diversity in food production.
• SDG 2 considers the complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture. Malnutrition and extreme hunger constitute a crucial barrier to sustainable development. Hungry people are less productive and easily prone to diseases.

Challenges

• Despite some progress, more than two billion people globally still lack access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve zero hunger by 2030, or to meet global nutrition targets.
• According to the United Nations, there are around 690 million people who are hungry, which accounts for 9.9 percent of the world population.

Under-nutrition has been on the rise since 2015, after falling for decades.

• The COVID-19 pandemic poses a threat to food security.
• Up to 142 million people in 2020 have suffered from undernourishment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stunting and wasting children statistics are likely to worsen with the pandemic.

About Global Hunger Index

• It is a peer-reviewed annual report, jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. 
• It is designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels.

It is calculated on the basis of four indicators- 

• Undernourishment. 
• Child wasting, the share of children under the age of five who are wasted (that is, who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition). 
• Child stunting, children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition. 
• Child mortality, the mortality rate of children under the age of five.