New Delhi: The Union Government on Wednesday refuted the downgrading of India from 101st position to 107 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) claiming that it is a "flawed measure" of Hunger. The comments were made by the Union Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Zubin Irani in a written reply in Rajya Sabha in response to questions raised by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Jawahar Sircar.
Irani argued that the GHI should not be taken at "face value" as it is neither appropriate nor representative of the hunger prevalent in the country adding that out of its four indicators, only undernourishment is 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," stated Irani.
She further alleged that the value of ‘prevalence of undernourished 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.
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Countering the Global Hunger Index 2022 report which states that the prevalence of undernourished in the population stands at 16.3%, child stunting is at 35.5%, child wasting is at 19.3% and child mortality rate is 3.3%, the Union Minister cited the NFHS-5 (2019-21) report according to which 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 added.
According to the Minister the Union Government has accorded high priority to the issue of malnutrition and is making serious efforts to address the issue. "The 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)," she added.
