Context: With a rank of 111th India slips four places in global hunger index rankings; govt criticises report. Previously, India ranked 107th out of 121 countries in 2022.

• The country's Ministry of Women and Child Development has said that the rankings are "flawed" and did not depict India's true position.

About Global Hunger Index

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels.

GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators:

1. Undernourishment

2. Child stunting

3. Child wasting

4. Child mortality

• The GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger - zero is the best score (implies no hunger) and 100 is the worst.

• The GHI is prepared by European NGOs of Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe.

• The GHI is an annual report and each set of GHI scores uses data from a 5-year period.  The 2023 GHI scores are calculated using data from 2018 through 2022.

Key Findings

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels.

• With a score of 28.7 in the Global Hunger Index-2023, India has a level of hunger that is serious, according to a report based on the index.

• The 2023 GHI score for the world is 18.3, considered moderate and less than one point below the world's 2015 GHI score of 19.1.

• India ranked 111th out of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index-2023 with the country reporting the highest child wasting rate at 18.7 per cent.

• According to the index, the rate of undernourishment in India stood at 16.6 per cent and under-five mortality at 3.1 per cent.

• The report also said that the prevalence of anaemia in women aged between 15 and 24 years stood at 58.1 per cent.

• The 2023 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that, after many years of advancement up to 2015, progress against hunger worldwide remains largely at a standstill.

• Furthermore, since 2017 the prevalence of undernourishment, one of the indicators used in the calculation of GHI scores, has been on the rise, and the number of undernourished people has climbed from 572 million to about 735 million, the index said.

Global

• India's neighbouring countries Pakistan (102th), Bangladesh (81st), Nepal (69th) and Sri Lanka (60th) have fared better than it in the index.

• South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara are the world regions with the highest hunger levels, with a GHI score of 27 each, indicating serious hunger.

• "India has the highest child wasting rate in the world, at 18.7 per cent, reflecting acute undernutrition,” the report based on the index stated. Wasting is measured based on children's weight relative to their height.

Government Stance

• The GHI continues to be a flawed measure of hunger and does not reflect India’s true position. The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. 

• Three out of the four indicators used for the calculation of the index are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population. 

• The fourth and most important indicator Proportion of Undernourished population (PoU) is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000.

• As the demand for food continues to increase, UN officials say that up to 783 million people — one in 10 of the world’s population — go to bed hungry every night. More than 345 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity this year, an increase of almost 200 million people from early 2021 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The Indian government continues to prioritize nutrition initiatives. Over 1.39 milllion Anganwadi centres have joined the Poshan Tracker ICT application, aiding more than 100.3 million beneficiaries.

• Moreover, India introduced the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) in light of the pandemic-led economic disruptions, providing over 111.8 million tonne of food grains in 28 months to nearly 800 million beneficiaries.