Union Minister of State for Agriculture Parshottam Rupala, in the Rajya Sabha on March 19, 2021, questioned the methodology and data accuracy of the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report.
- India has been placed at 94th out of 107 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2020.
- Mr. Rupala claimed that children considered healthy were also counted to determine the ranking.
- He was responding to a question by the Aam Aadmi Party’s Sanjay Singh, who wanted to know why India was ranked below countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, when it was among top 10 food-producing countries in the world.
About Global Hunger Index (GHI)
- Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a peer-reviewed annual report, jointly published by Concern Worldwide, an Ireland-based humanitarian group, and Welthungerhilfe, a Germany-based NGO, designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels.
- The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels.
Global Hunger Index (GHI) Methodology
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 undernutrition),
- Child stunting (share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition),
- 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.
