India ranks 111 out of 125 countries in hunger index

• India ranks 111 out of a total of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023.
• The Union government, though, contested India’s performance for the third year in a row, citing flawed methodology.

Key Points

• The index is jointly released by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe every October.
• Afghanistan, Haiti and 12 sub-Saharan countries perform worse than India on the GHI.
• The GHI score is based on a formula which combines four indicators that together capture the multi-dimensional nature of hunger including
  • Under-nourishment
  • child stunting
  • child wasting
  • child mortality.
• While India made significant strides between 2000 and 2015, with its score improving from 38.4 in 2000 to 35.5 in 2008 and 29.2 in 2015, over the past eight years
• Globally, the share of people who are undernourished, which is one of the indicators used in the index, actually rose from 7.5% in 2017 to 9.2% in 2022
• South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara are the world regions with the highest hunger levels, with GHI scores of 27.0 each, indicating serious hunger.
• West Asia and North Africa is the region with the third-highest hunger level with a score of 11.9 indicating “moderate” hunger level.
• Latin American and the Caribbean is the only region in the world whose GHI scores have worsened between 2015 and 2023.
• East and Southeast Asia, dominated by populous China, has the second-lowest 2023 GHI score of any region in the report.
• China, for example, is among the top 20 countries that each have a GHI score of less than 5.

Reason:

• According to the GHI 2023 report, the stagnation in the fight against global hunger is largely due “to the combined effects of overlapping crises, including :
  • the COVID-19 pandemic
  • the Russia-Ukraine war
  • economic stagnation
  • the impacts of climate change
  • The intractable conflicts facing many countries of the world
• It adds that the combination of these crises have led to a cost of living crisis and exhausted the coping capacity of many countries.

Prelims Takeaway

• Global Hunger Index (GHI)