Analyze the performance of India in the Global Hunger Index 2019.

In the Global Hunger Index 2019, India was ranked in 102nd position with a score of 30.3.

How India has fared over the last decade?

India with a score of 38.8 was in the “alarming” category in 2000. Since then, India has steadily improved on most counts to reduce its score and is now slotted in the “serious” category.

Slow pace of improvement

The pace of India’s improvement has been relatively slow. In 2000, countries like Niger and Sierra Leone had scores of 52.1 and 53.6, respectively. These countries found themselves in the “extremely alarming” category of hunger and were much worse off than India.

Even though India has improved its score, others have done more. This explains why despite achieving relatively fast economic growth since 2000, India has not been able to make commensurate strides in reducing hunger.

Breaking Down India’s Performance

India has shown improvement in indicators such as the under-5 mortality rate, prevalence of stunting among children and prevalence of undernourishment owing to inadequate food.

Wasting

• In the category of Child Wasting (children with low weight for their age), India’s has performance has worsened. The percentage of children under the age of 5 years suffering from wasting has gone up from 16.5 in 2010 to 20.8 now.
• Wasting is indicative of acute undernutrition and India is the worst among all countries on this parameter. India’s child wasting rate is extremely high at 20.8 per cent.
• India had the highest wasting rate for any country in this report for which data or estimates were available.

Stunting

• India’s child stunting rate at 37.9 per cent is also categorized as very high in terms of its public health significance.
• In India, only about 9.6 per cent of all children between 6 and 23 months of age are fed a minimum acceptable diet.

On the performance of India, the report states that because of its large population India’s Global Hunger Index indicator values have an outsized impact on the indicator values for the region.

Topics: GS-II: Issues Relating to Poverty and Hunger