Look At Govt Data Instead Of Using Outmoded Method Of Ranking India In Global Hunger Index: NITI Aayog Chief

Niti Aayog Chief Amitabh Kant has asked the authorities who publish the annual Global Hunger Index to consult the Indian government before writing such reports, the Indian Express reported Friday.

India ranked 102 among the 117 countries listed in the Global Hunger Index for 2019, and Kant feels that this data to derive this conclusion is ‘outmoded’.

He has written to the Global Hunger Index authorities three months before the 2020 data is published, asking them to look at the data shared by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. He feels that if the data was looked at, India would have ranked 93 instead of 102, the report added.

Last year, in another report conducted by International Food Policy Research Institute, India was ranked100 behind behind North Korea, Bangladesh and Iraq but ahead of Pakistan.

The country’s serious hunger level is driven by high child malnutrition and underlines need for stronger commitment to the social sector, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said in its report. India stood at 97th position in last year’s rankings.

“India is ranked 100th out of 119 countries, and has the third highest score in all of Asia — only Afghanistan and Pakistan are ranked worse,” IFPRI said in a statement.

“At 31.4, India’s 2017 GHI (Global Hunger Index) score is at the high end of the ‘serious’ category, and is one of the main factors pushing South Asia to the category of worst performing region on the GHI this year, followed closely by Africa South of the Sahara,” it added.

Only three other countries in this year’s GHI –Djibouti, Sri Lanka and South Sudan — show child wasting above 20 percent. India’s child wasting rate has not shown any substantial improvement over the past 25 years. However, India has made considerable improvement in reducing its child stunting rate, down 29 per cent since 2000, but even that progress leaves India with a relatively high stunting rate of 38.4.