Food deprivation & hunger remain widespread in India

Subir Roy

Senior Economic Analyst

THE new Global Hunger Index rankings, which have placed India (111th) not only towards the bottom of the list of 125 countries but also below its neighbours Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, have drawn a predictable rejoinder from the government.

The government has rejected the index, calling it a flawed measure of ‘hunger’ and one which suffers from serious methodological issues. It has gone further and called it an exercise which “shows a mala fide intent”.

The index has been brought out by two respected organisations — Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and Concern Worldwide. Anticipating that India would object to the findings of the index, as it has done in the case of earlier indexes, the two engaged in a dialogue with India and also took into account data available with UN agencies to prepare the index.

The index, in fact, has bad news for the global system as a whole. Global hunger remains very high and the progress in reducing it has largely stalled in recent years. The hunger scores for both the 2008 and 2015 indexes improved (went down) by over four points compared to the previous ones, whereas the latest 2023 score is down on the previous one (2015) by less than one point. Also, undernourishment has actually gone up.

The index uses four indicators — undernourished (insufficient calorific intake), stunting (low height compared to age), wasting (low bodyweight compared to height) and infant mortality (children dying below the age of five) — to calculate individual country scores and the global aggregate. According to the present reckoning, all four are projected to fall short of the target for 2030 set by the Sustainable Development Goals. Against the 2030 goal of achieving zero hunger, as many as 58 countries or almost half of those covered in the latest index will not reach the low hunger category, not to speak of zero hunger.

The study mentions two reasons for this slowdown from 2015 to 2023. First came Covid-19, which was followed by the Russia-Ukraine war, which caused food prices to rise sharply. People in some poorer countries are struggling to eat even one meal a day. In a small way, India has added to the international food scarcity and high prices by putting restrictions on the export of non-basmati rice, of which it is a major exporter.

What is worrisome is that the global food situation is unlikely to get much better. Extreme weather events, a fallout of climate change, are going up rapidly and resulting in floods and droughts, which are hitting food output. Plus, the war between Israel and Hamas is threatening to drag in other countries of the region, adding to uncertainty over the supply and prices of food.

Of the four indicators used in the index, India and its neighbours are not among the worst affected in three — child stunting, undernourishment and child mortality. But India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh figure on the list of the most adversely affected countries in child wasting, with India having the highest score of 18.7 per cent, followed by Sri Lanka (13.1 per cent) and Bangladesh scoring the best among the three with 11 per cent. This ties up with the broader reality of Bangladesh scoring better than India in most human development indicators despite being much poorer.

The index report makes several policy recommendations. It says put the right to food for all at the heart of the process of food systems transformation. Invest in young people’s capabilities to be leaders in the food systems transformation process. Invest in sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems to ensure they offer viable and attractive livelihoods to young people.

For the Indian government, this translates into a right to food, which is a de facto reality even though it may not be written in the statute books, like the right to education. From the way the latter has been exercised, it seems that though a right opens the avenue for legal recourse, being able to exercise the right meaningfully is not made stronger for it being justiciable. Also, there is no reason why older people with more experience will not be able to do a good job of transforming the food system.

India’s objections to the index stem from several reasons. The undernourishment data, which is a key element in the index, is based on the findings of a Gallup World Poll, which accessed just 3,000 respondents.

The report also highlights India’s extremely high child wasting and child stunting rates. These are derived from the data of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019-21. The government’s contention is that the index should have used real-time data depicted through the Poshan Tracker.

The government also questions the use of the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study (MGRS), whose field work was conducted during 1997-2003 to determine the extent of stunting and wasting in the country. Its contention is that the study has used data of affluent children in southern India and they are not representative of the nation as a whole.

A global index can be easily dismissed, but where does India go from here? Policies to make food available at highly subsidised rates and seeking to ensure the supply of safe drinking water and sanitation to stop open defecation are all currently in play and they have a role in lowering infant mortality. Plus, the national rural employment guarantee programme seeks to keep hunger among the entire rural population at bay. There is a need to extend this to the urban poor.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections next year, various state governments have offered ‘freebies’, which have been denounced by commentators as being fiscally irresponsible, but will play a role in reducing poverty and keeping hunger at bay.

The use of the word ‘hunger’ to name the index may not be appropriate, but there is little doubt that deprivation remains widespread, with a totally inadequate anganwadi system unable to tackle undernourishment among the children of the needy. Policymakers should look beyond the index and focus on these issues.  

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