India has been ranked 107th among 121 countries in Global Hunger Index 2022, released on Friday. The country slipped six places as, last year, India was ranked 101 out of 116 countries.
For the second time, India has fared poorly than its neighbour country Pakistan (99th). Unfortunately, the country also ranks below Bangladesh (84th), Nepal (81th), and Sri Lanka (64th). Whereas Afghanistan is the only country in South Asia performing worse than India on the index.
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for measuring and tracking hunger at the regional, national and global levels. The scores are based on the values of four component indicators ━ undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality. The GBI score is calculated on a 100-point scale, where zero is the best score (reflecting no hunger), and 100 is the worst. India, with 29.1 scores, falls in the ‘serious’ category.
Talking about the factors, India’s child wasting rate (low weight for height) increased to 19.3% from 15.1% (2014). Apart from this, undernourishment is measured at 16.3% 0n 2021. Whereas India shows improvement in the other two indicators, child stunning and morality. Child stunting has declined from 38.7% to 35.5%, and child mortality has dropped from 4.6% to 3.3%.
Globally, the progress against hunger has largely been inactive in recent years. There is a slight improvement in the 2022 score compared to 2014. This is due to overlapping crises such as conflict, climate change, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine War, which has increased global food, fuel, and fertiliser prices. It is also expected to ‘worsen hunger’ in 2023.
There are 44 countries that currently have ‘serious’ or ‘alarming’ hunger levels, and “without a major shift, neither the world as a whole nor approximately 46 countries are projected to achieve even low hunger as measured by the GHI by 2030,” notes the report.
