Despite improvements, India still leads the world in acute malnutrition

The Global Hunger Index 2020 has ranked India in the “serious hunger” category, placing it at 94 out of 107 countries.

If you, however, look at 103 countries (instead of 107) for which data is uniformly available for two decades, it might appear that India’s ranking improved from 2019 to 2020 (from 96 to 92). But then again, a comparison over the last two decades shows that it in fact deteriorated. 

India’s standing in the set of 103 came down from 84 at the turn of the millennium to 92 in 2006 and then 88 in 2012. It fell to 96 in 2019 and then improved to the 92nd position now. 

India’s rank on GHI scale 

India’s relative fall, despite improvements, shows that some countries that lagged behind it earlier progressed better on the parameters used to determine the hunger index.

GHI measures the proportion of undernourished in the population, prevalence of children with low height for their age, and low weight for their height. And finally, the mortality rate of children under the age of five. 

India stands at the bottom in terms of “wasting”, or having low weight for a particular height, among children below five. Wasting, thus, represents acute malnutrition.  

Wasting: Global comparison

Prevalence of wasting, sadly, has remained constant in India for two decades: 17 per cent in 2000, and 17 per cent in 2020, according the GHI report. There was an improvement in the middle, but data shows those gains have vanished. 

One reason for this could be that the Indian diet is highly skewed towards carbohydrates, with a disregard to proteins. India’s per capita protein consumption is among the lowest in the world. 

State-scan

India’s battle with wasting is not as simple as it is with undernourishment. For example, relatively underdeveloped states such as Bihar fare poorly on the nutrition front. But when it comes to wasting, the facts are counterintuitive. 

Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka are the big economic-hub states where wasting is more prevalent than in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal. 

The slip

Developed states, which have improved on the count of stunting, undernourishment and infant mortality, have not been able to do so in terms of curtailing wasting. 

Apart from wasting, though the report notes an improvement in infant mortality over the years, it also says that child mortality due to low birthweight has actually increased.