NEWS  The low rank on the Global Hunger Index should push India to look again at its policies and interventions.

CONTEXT

• This year’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) had ranked India 101 out of 116 countries.
  • This put India far below some of its neighbouring countries.
• Barring 2020’s rank of 94 out of 107 countries, India’s rank has been between 100 and 103 since 2017.

GLOBAL HUNGER INDEX (GHI)

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool that measures and tracks hunger globally as well as by region and by country.
• The index is prepared annually by European NGOs of Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe.
• The GHI has four components:
  • insufficient calorie intake
  • wasting (low weight for height)
  • stunting (low height for age)
  • mortality
• The first component, insufficient calorie intake — is applicable for all age groups, whereas the remaining three — wasting (low weight for height), stunting (low height for age) and mortality — are confined to children under five years.

SOURCE OF DATA USED

• The data on deficiency in calorie intake, accorded 33% weight, is sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Suite of Food Security Indicators (2021).
• The data on child wasting and stunting (2016-2020), each accounting for 16.6% of weight, are from the World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Bank, complemented with the latest data from the Demographic and Health Surveys.
• Under-five mortality data are for 2019 from the UN Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

ISSUES REGARDING GHI

• • The government has questioned the methodology of calculating the index and claimed that the ranking does not represent the ground reality.
    • This calls for careful scrutiny of the methodology, especially of the GHI’s components.
  • The GHI is largely children-oriented with a higher emphasis on undernutrition than on hunger and its hidden forms, including micronutrient deficiencies. Hence, it misses critical parameters in its consideration:

• The first component — calorie insufficiency — is problematic for many reasons.

• • • • The lower calorie intake, which does not necessarily mean deficiency, may also stem from reduced physical activity, better social infrastructure (road, transport and healthcare) and access to energy-saving appliances at home, among others.
      • Recent analysis establishes that the ‘physical disease environment’ at the State level also significantly influences the calorie intake.
      • From this point of view, a large proportion of the population in Kerala and Tamil Nadu may get counted as calorie deficient despite them being better in nutritional outcome indicators.
      • Conversely, there are States that have a higher average level of calorie intake, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, but their needs may even be higher than the earmarked level of required calories for India as a whole because these States have high prevalence of communicable diseases and low level of mechanisation in the economy.
        • Thus, it is likely that the existing methodology might underestimate the prevalence of calorie deficiency in these States.
      • For a vast and diverse country like India, using a uniform calorie norm to arrive at deficiency prevalence means failing to recognise the huge regional imbalances in factors that may lead to differentiated calorie requirements at the State level.
      • All this raises questions on the appropriateness of the calorie component of the index.
        • Even India’s own official estimates of prevalence of calorie deficiency are not free from this anomaly.

• The low ranking does not mean that India fares uniformly poor in every aspect:

• • • Despite studies suggesting that child undernutrition and mortality are usually closely related, India has registered relatively better performance in the child mortality parameter.
    • This anomaly raises the question that should we then dismiss the GHI as it shows India in a bad light or should we gracefully accept it.

ANALYSING INDIA’S RECORD

Wasting and Stunting

• • The GHI highlights India’s dismal record in a domain of child undernutrition, specially wasting.
  • Wasting is an acute, short-term measure, while Stunting is a chronic, long-term measure of undernutrition.
    • Child wasting can manifest as a result of an immediate lack of nutritional intake and sudden exposure to an infectious atmosphere.
  • However, a higher order of priority was accorded to stunting, both in research and policy, for the right reasons as it is a stable indicator and does not oscillate with minor changes in circumstances, while wasting does.
  • As a result, Child stunting in India declined from 54.2% in 1998–2002 to 34.7% in 2016-2020, whereas child wasting remained around 17% throughout the two decades of the 21st century.

• India’s wasting prevalence (17.3%) is one among the highest in the world.

• Additionally, studies say that COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate child undernutrition in general and child wasting in particular.

Child Mortality- An exception

• • Studies suggest that child undernutrition and mortality are usually closely related, as child undernutrition plays an important facilitating role in child mortality.
  • However, India appears to be an exception in this regard.

• India’s child mortality rate has been lower compared to Sub-Saharan African countries despite it having higher levels of stunting.

• This implies that though India was not able to ensure better nutritional security for all children under five years, it was able to save many lives due to the availability of and access to better health facilities.

WAYFORWARD

• • There is an urgent need to address the issue of wasting with proper research and policy making as done in the field of stunting.

• Effectively countered episodes of wasting is key to making sustained and quick progress in child nutrition.

• India can tackle wasting by effectively monitoring regions that are more vulnerable to socioeconomic and environmental crises, it can possibly improve wasting and stunting simultaneously.
  • There seems to be no short-cut way of improving stunting without addressing wasting.
  • Unfortunately, India lost this opportunity as Integrated Child Development Scheme services were either non-functional or severely disrupted — partly because the staff and services were utilised to attend to the COVID-19 emergency.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/alarming-hunger-or-statistical-artefact/article37045072.ece