Hunger pangs

India continues to lag on the Global Hunger Index

In the latest edition — the 13th one — of the Global Hunger Index (GHI), brought out by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide, India has yet again found itself among the lowest-ranked countries in the world. The GHI has ranked 119 countries and India is pegged at 103, where it is marginally better than Pakistan (106) and North Korea (109) but considerably behind other neighbours such as Nepal (72) and Sri Lanka (67). India also fares rather poorly with other countries, which might be considered comparable on other parameters such as Indonesia (73) or South Africa (60) and Brazil (31); China is still further ahead at 25. This is not to suggest that India has not made significant strides when it comes to the GHI, which defines “hunger” not in terms of calories consumed but by using four specific parameters, namely the prevalence of undernourishment, child stunting (that is, low height compared to their age), child wasting (that is, low weight for their age), and child mortality. Indeed, since the first time it was mapped in 1999-2000, the proportion of undernourished population in India has come down from 18.2 per cent to 14.8 per cent, the prevalence of stunting in children below the age of five has gone down sharply from 54.2 per cent to 38.4 per cent, and the child mortality rate for those below five years has declined from 9.2 per cent to 4.3 per cent.
 

Yet, India continues to stay in the “serious” category of the GHI. And, with good reason. For one, the above numbers are still embarrassingly high for a major economy that is growing the fastest in the world. There are still way too many children suffering from stunting, which reflects chronic undernourishment. But perhaps the biggest worry is the level of wasting in Indian children. Quite distinct from the other three parameters, child wasting has actually gone up over these years — from 17.1 per cent to 21 per cent. Wasting reflects acute malnutrition and the fact that it has gone up sharply in the past 5 to 10 years, as the data shows, is a massive blot on India’s growth story. Data also shows that sharp improvements in other parameters were registered after 2005 when numerous policy attempts were made both at the central and state levels — such as hunger missions launched by Maharashtra — to directly attack the problem of widespread hunger. This also coincided with the rights-based approach where mid-day meals and nutrition of mothers were also improved.

In essence, the solution lies in adequately distributing nutritious food and health care services to children and lactating mothers. In this context, however, the response of Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh to the GHI report appears misplaced. On Tuesday, he announced that the government was working to achieve zero hunger by 2030 but talked about higher farm output as a tool to achieve it. But, as various researchers have shown, child undernourishment does not go away by merely having more food grain output. It is the distribution, along with timely availability of food that matters. In fact, given the surplus food grains that India has, why choose 2030 for eradicating hunger? For a country that aspires to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council, India must strive to secure nutrition for its children and ensure timely delivery of food.