The National Food Security Act, 2013 was enacted to facilitate equitable access to foodgrains in order to ensure sufficient nutrition for all. Post its implementation, despite the increase in availability and accessibility of foodgrains, a survey conducted among beneficiary households in Bihar and Haryana reveals that many do not get the recommended amount of foodgrains in the scheduled time, and more than 80% of the beneficiary and of non–beneficiary families suffer from calorie deficits. Corruption and malpractices such as black marketing need to be curbed to ensure effective implementation of the act and to achieve the goal of ending hunger and malnutrition.
“Hunger” is indeed a sensational term. It causes a stir among politicians, policymakers, journalists and all concerned. Unsurprisingly, India’s poor rank in terms of the Global Hunger Index (GHI) becomes a major talking point with the release of the country report cards every year.
At first, the arguments put forward by the government to question India’s GHI 2022 ranking appear technically valid. However, being founded on narrow conceptual considerations, they are insufficient to defend India’s position. While India’s GHI ranking is affected also by the performance of other countries, the GHI score shows consistent deterioration since 2015, except in 2020. A preliminary assessment of data indicates that India’s GHI ranking should not be seen in isolation and instead is likely a manifestation of absolute increase in urban hunger.
The article proposes a methodological correction to the original Global Hunger Index to improve its validity as a tool to measure hunger in a country. Normalising the variables using their range instead of historic peaks as in the original GHI would help eliminate some of the measurement bias from the ranking procedure and make the ranking more justifi able to the present-day data.
The Indian slip on the Global Hunger Index 2021 is being attributed by the government to the alleged methodological discrepancies involved in constructing the GHI. This article, to begin with, counters the government’s argument defending India’s position on the GHI. It further finds that India likely has been undergoing a decline in food security since the mid-2000s itself. The trend is corroborated from the 2019–20 data available for selected states. Though COVID-19 has compounded the food insecurity challenges, India’s position on the GHI cannot be attributed to the pandemic alone. Rather, it reflects a trend that India has been experiencing for sometime now.
Does the Global Hunger Index convey the actual picture of hunger in India? While there are methodological issues in the measurement of calorific undernourishment, India’s performance remains poor in tackling child undernutrition, but not so in child mortality. The varying performance in the three domains calls for an objective assessment and targeted remedial measures in aspects where performance is poor.
