Instead of trashing Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022, Govt should draw some lessons from its findings

An international agency comes up with a report which exposes some unpleasant fact about India, the Government and the Bharatiya Janata Party slam it on one pretext or the other, and Opposition leaders slam both the Government and the BJP for having failed the nation—this is the pattern that all of us have discerned for quite some time. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022, which showed India slipping six notches, is no exception. The Congress has said that the BJP Government is “living in denial” after GHI 2022 showed that India was ranked at 107 out of 121 countries, lagging behind all South Asian countries except Afghanistan. European NGOs Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, which brought out the index, have called the level of hunger in India as serious. Typically, the Government trashed the GHI 2022, claiming that it is an effort to taint the country’s image and questioning the “serious methodological issues” the index suffers from. The Women and Child Development Ministry said that three out of the four indicators used for 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 estimate of Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000. Last year too, the Government had rejected GHI 2021. Women & Child Development Minister Zubin Irani said in a written reply in Lok Sabha on December 3 that the index did not reflect India’s true picture as it was a flawed measure of hunger.

There may or may not be serious methodological issues, but dubbing the index as an attempt to taint India’s image smacks of self-righteousness. Instead of making statements that allude to some conspiracy theory, the Government should introspect and scrutinise GHI 2022. And if there are serious flaws with the report, it should interact with the body that prepares the index rather than just dismiss the index with disdain it does not deserve. India’s child wasting rate, at 19.3 percent, is the highest of any country in the world, the index says. It also says that child stunting rates in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan range between 35 and 38 per cent, the highest being in Afghanistan. Now Afghanistan has been a war-torn nation for decades, and Pakistan’s economy is tottering, but why is child stunting rampant in our country, the fifth largest economy with political stability, a sprightly entrepreneurial class, a vibrant middle class, and zillion welfare programmes? GHI 2022 talks about a decline in stunting in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu between 2006 and 2016. Stunting fell mainly in response to improvements in the coverage of health and nutrition interventions, household conditions, and maternal factors (such as mothers’ health and education). Perhaps the authorities at various levels can draw some lessons from findings of GHI 2022.