India Ranks 111th on Global Hunger Index 2023; Govt Calls It Flawed

New Delhi: The Indian government has rejected the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023, which ranked India 111th out of 125 countries. The Ministry of Women and Child Development stated that the index is flawed and does not accurately represent India’s hunger situation.

The government raised concerns about the GHI’s methodology, asserting that three out of the four indicators used are related to children’s health and may not be representative of the entire population.

The most critical indicator, the “Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population,” relies on an opinion poll with a small sample size of 3,000.

The government also pointed out discrepancies between the GHI data and the data uploaded on the Poshan Tracker, where the percentage of child wasting consistently remained below 7.2%, in contrast to the 18.7% reported in the GHI.

It also emphasized that indicators like stunting and wasting are influenced by multiple factors beyond hunger, including sanitation, genetics, environment, and food intake utilization. Child mortality, another indicator, may not be solely attributable to hunger.

The government has expressed strong reservations about the GHI’s methodology and believes that it does not accurately represent India’s hunger situation.