GHI and this year’s Indian Rank
Fahid Fayaz Darangay
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels. GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators: undernourishment (share of the population with insufficient caloric intake), child wasting (share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute under nutrition), child stunting (share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic under nutrition), and child mortality (mortality rate of children under age five, partly reflecting the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments).
Based on the values of the four indicators, the GHI determines hunger on a 100-point scale where 0 is the best possible score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst. Each country’s GHI score is classified by severity, from low to extremely alarming.
For the 2020 GHI report, data were assessed for 132 countries. Out of these, there were sufficient data to calculate 2020 GHI scores for and rank 107 countries (by way of comparison, data availability allowed for the ranking of 117 countries in the 2019 report). For 25 countries, individual scores could not be calculated and ranks could not be determinded owing to lack of data. Where possible, these countries were provisionally designated by severity: 1 country is designated as low, 9 as serious, and 8 as alarming. For 7 countries, no provisional designations could be established .Countries that have identical 2020 scores are given the same ranking (for example, North Macedonia and the Russian Federation are both ranked 18th).
According to the 2020 GHI, of the 107 countries for which complete data are available for calculating GHI scores, 3 suffer from levels of hunger that are alarming – Chad, Timor-Leste, and Madagascar – and 31 countries have serious levels of hunger. Hunger is considered to be alarming in 8 additional countries – Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen and serious in 9 additional countries based on provisional categorizations
Regional Distribution:
India in 2020: India ranked 94 among 107 nations in the Global Hunger Index 2020 and is in the ‘serious’ hunger category with experts blaming poor implementation processes, lack of effective monitoring, siloed approach in tackling malnutrition and poor performance by large states behind the low ranking.
Last year, India’s rank was 102 out of 117 countries.
The neighbouring Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan too are in the ‘serious’ category but ranked higher than India in this year’s hunger index. While Bangladesh ranked 75, Myanmar and Pakistan are in the 78th and 88th position.
Nepal in 73rd and Sri Lanka in 64th position are in ‘moderate’ hunger category, the report showed.
Seventeen nations, including China, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, Cuba and Kuwait, shared the top rank with GHI scores of less than five, the website of the Global Hunger Index, that tracks hunger and malnutrition, said on Friday.
According to the report, 14 per cent of India’s population is undernourished.
It also showed the country recorded a 37.4 per cent stunting rate among children under five and a wasting rate of 17.3 per cent. The under-five mortality rate stood at 3.7 per cent.
Wasting is children who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute under nutrition. Stunting is children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic under nutrition.
“Every fifth child born in India is in Uttar Pradesh. So if you have a high level of malnutrition in a state that has a high population, it contributes a lot to India’s average. Obviously, then, India’s average will be slow to move,”
The source of the graph is GHI 2020.
(The author is currently pursuing his Masters in Financial Economics from Madras School of Economics, Chennai)
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