India has ranked 111th out of the 125 countries on the 2023 Global Hunger Index (GHI), slipping four places since last year. However, the government has rejected the report calling it “flawed” and “erroneous”.
“With a score of 28.7 in the 2023 Global Hunger Index, India has a level of hunger that is serious,” said the global report released on Thursday by Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, Non-Government Organisations from Ireland and Germany respectively.
In 2022, India ranked 107 out of the 125 countries. The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, in a statement, refuted the claims and said that the index “continues to be a flawed measure of âHungerâ and does not reflect Indiaâs true position”.
The GHI report ranked Pakistan at 102, Bangladesh at 81, Nepal at 69 and Sri Lanka at 60. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were the regions with the highest hunger levels.
“The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. Three out of the four indicators used for calculation of the index are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population,” the ministry said.
“The fourth and most important indicator âProportion of Undernourished (PoU) populationâ is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000,” it added.
Meanwhile, the report also counted India with the worldâs highest child wasting rate of 18.7 per cent, indicating acute undernutrition.
The rate of undernourishment in India stood at 16.6 per cent and under-five mortality at 3.1 per cent.
The report also said that the prevalence of anaemia in women aged between 15 and 24 years stood at 58.1 per cent