India trails neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2021. Islamabad, Dhaka and Kathmandu are placed 92, 76 and 76 out of 116 countries, while New Delhi lags at 101.  

The GHI is scale, brought out almost every year by Welt Hunger Hilfe, to map hunger around the world. A low score (low hunger) gets a country a higher ranking and implies a better performance. The objective is to ensure that the world achieves “Zero Hunger by 2030” — one of the Sustainable Development Goals laid out by the United Nations.

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In the report prepared jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, 18 countries, including China, Brazil and Kuwait, shared the top rank. These three had a GHI score of less than five, the website of the Global Hunger Index that tracks hunger and malnutrition said.

India was ranked 94th out of 107 countries last year. India’s GHI score plummeted from 38.8 in 2000 to the range of 28.8 – 27.5 between 2012 and 2021.

GHI is determined using four indicators:

1) Undernourishment (which reflects inadequate food availability), 2) Child Wasting (which reflects acute undernutrition), 3) Child Stunting (which reflects chronic undernutrition) and 4) Child Mortality (which reflects both inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environment). 

The report further added that the rate of wasting among children in India rose from 17.1% between 1998-2002 to 17.3% between 2016-2020.

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“People have been severely hit by COVID-19 and by pandemic related restrictions in India, the country with highest child wasting rate worldwide,” the report said.

Even though India showed improvement in indicators like under-5 mortality rate, prevalence of stunting among children and prevalence of undernourishment owing to inadequate food, the report termed the level of hunger as “alarming”.