The authors of the Global Hunger Index (GHI), released on October 15, write that “the level of hunger in India is serious”. The country is ranked 107 of the 121 countries they studied. With a score of 29.1 (0 means no hunger), India is behind its South Asian neighbours — Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Close to 20 per cent of children in the country below the age of five suffer from the most visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition — wasting, or “low weight-for-height”. About 35 per cent of such children are not as tall as they should be. These sobering factoids could have served as inputs for government programmes such as Poshan 2.0 and the Mid-Day Meal scheme. However — like last year — the Ministry of Women and Child Development not only dismissed the GHI but also questioned the intent of its authors. An official statement has described the report as part of a “consistent effort’’ to “taint India’s image”.
Part of the government’s critique pertains to one of the major takeaways of the GHI — the pandemic seems to have aggravated India’s malnutrition crisis. It contends that the report ignores the food security efforts undertaken during the crisis, especially the provision of 5 kg foodgrain to all beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act in addition to their regular ration. There can be little doubt about the efficacy of the PDS as a safety net during troubled times. However, as several scholars have pointed out, the nutrition deficit of the country’s children is, in large measure, a function of their poor diets. Studies have shown that even the well-off in the country do not consume adequate amounts of fruits, vegetables and non-cereal proteins. Eggs do not figure in the Mid-Day Meal schemes in a majority of states.
The government has argued that the index relied on an opinion poll. The authors of the report have clarified that the GHI draws on data reported by member countries, including India. The debate on methodology isn’t settled and such conversations could enrich the understanding of a longstanding predicament faced by the country — one that the National Family Health Surveys have long underscored. The NFHS-5, conducted just before the pandemic, showed that more than 20 per cent of children below the age of five did not weigh as much as they should. The discourse on nutrition could acquire greater nuance with more data — on household consumption of food items, for instance. But the country has not had any official estimate on per capita household spending since 2011-12 — the findings of the last survey in 2017-18 were rejected by the government on “data quality” issues. Work on filling this vacuum has, reportedly, begun. The government would be well-advised to bolster its information repositories that can help it address malnutrition effectively, and not be prickly about GHI rankings.
