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India has again found itself on the lowest rungs of the Global Hunger Index, raising persistent questions about the country’s efforts to provide adequate food and nutrition to its population. The 2024 Index ranks India 105th among 127 countries, placing it in the ‘serious’ category for hunger levels with a score of 27.3. While a score below 10 indicates low hunger, scores above 20 show serious, alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger. India fares much worse than its neighbours Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and it has only Pakistan, Afghanistan and some African countries ranking below its position. Its position has also been falling over the years. The index is prepared on the basis of indicators like undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality. About 13.7 per cent of India’s population remains underfed. A staggering 35.5 per cent of children are stunted, and 18.7 per cent children suffer from wasting. About 2.9 per cent of children die in the first five years.
The reality of having a hungry and undernourished population of 200 million, roughly the population of Brazil, sits ill with the reality of India being the world’s fastest growing economy, the fifth largest, with a GDP of about 4 trillion dollars. The undernourished population is about 14% of the country’s population and would rank as the seventh most populous in the world if it were a country. What the rising numbers of the undernourished tell is that there is much more to be done to fight hunger and poverty than schemes such as the National Food Security Act, Poshan Abhiyan and Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana. Even when the GDP is high, the country’s per capita income is among the lowest in the world, which is a sign of high income inequality. The problem is not a shortage of food. The country had a record food production of 332 million tonnes in 2023-24, in spite of the occurrence of extreme weather events, and has been an exporter of food. It is still unable to feed its hungry.
Unfortunately, the government does not accept the reality. It has tried to find fault with the data and the methodology of the hunger index, as it has done with all reports that do not show the country in a good light. But the numbers that went into the making of the index were drawn from the reports of the Sample Registration System published by the government. It does not help to be in denial. The government has to first accept the reality of hunger before it can effectively fight it. With such a hungry population, the country cannot gain much from its demographic dividend.