The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, on Wednesday, March 15, said that the Global Hunger Index (GHI) does not reflect India’s true picture as it is a flawed measure of ‘hunger’. In a written reply tabled at the Rajya Sabha, Union Minister Smriti Irani stated that the GHI should not be taken at face value as it was “neither appropriate nor representative of hunger prevalent in a country”.
The minister was replying to a question raised by Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar. He had raised two questions: if the Government contradicts the findings and the parameters of GHI that downgraded India’s rank from 101 to 107, and if the government claims that the country’s poor children were free from hunger and debilitating health conditions; and about India’s performance on each of the four components of the GH index, like prevalence of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality.
In her reply, Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani said that out of the four indicators of GHI - undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality - only one indicator (undernourishment) was directly related to hunger.
“The two indicators, namely, Stunting and Wasting are outcomes of complex interactions of various other factors like sanitation, genetics, environment and utilization of food intake apart from hunger which is taken as the causative/outcome factor for stunting and wasting in the GHI. Also, there is hardly any evidence that the fourth indicator, namely, child mortality is an outcome of hunger,” she said in her reply.
The reply also stated that the prevalence of undernourishment in the population stands at 16.3%, child stunting is at 35.5%, child wasting is at 19.3% and child mortality rate at 3.3%, according to the GHI 2022 report. “The value of ‘prevalence of undernourishment in the population’ is flawed as it is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size and does not take into account the series of measures taken by the Government of India to ensure food security in the country,” Smriti said.
She also said that data on nutritional indicators are captured periodically under the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and pointed out to the latest survey report NFHS-5 (2019-21), and added that the nutrition indicators for children under 5 years have improved as compared with NFHS-4 (2015-16). “Stunting has reduced from 38.4% to 35.5%, Wasting has reduced from 21.0% to 19.3% and Underweight prevalence has reduced from 35.8% to 32.1%,” she said.
As for the actions taken by the government, the Minister said that efforts under the Supplementary Nutrition Programme under Anganwadi Services and POSHAN Abhiyaan have been rejuvenated and converged as ‘Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0’ (Mission Poshan 2.0).