Abject failure: on India’s Global Hunger Index ranking

The 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI) suggests that India’s undernourished population this year would effectively rank as the seventh most populous country in the world — with roughly the population of Brazil, a staggering 200 million people. In stark terms, this is about 14% of India’s existing population. The 2024 GHI, which is the report’s 19th edition, considers comprehensive sets of data in its findings. In India’s case, it considers the Sample Registration System statistical reports, that the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation publishes annually, which provide data such as on births, deaths, infant and maternal mortality, based on reports by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and NITI Aayog.

In 2024, the scorecard for the 127 nations analysed ranges from “low” to “extremely alarming”. While India is ranked “serious” (rank 105 and score 27.3), it might as well be considered “extremely alarming” if one considers various other relevant factors. It also establishes the abject and systemic failure by the Indian state to address the most basic of human needs — of adequate food and nutrition that are essential to reap the benefits of the much touted ‘demographic dividend’. India was the world’s fastest growing economy, at 6.8% in FY24, with an estimated GDP of almost $4 trillion, ranking fifth globally. However, its per capita income, of $2,485 in FY24, was less than a fourth of the global average of $13,920 in FY22, indicating the wide income inequality that would result in vastly varied disposable incomes. This is pertinent as food inflation more than doubled between FY22 and FY24, from 3.8% to 7.5%, affecting the poor. Even as the Economic Survey for 2023-24 blames this on ‘extreme weather events, low reservoir levels and damaged crops, affecting farm output’, India recorded one of its highest levels of food production — 332 million tonnes in 2023-24. This was largely due to bumper crops in rice and wheat, though pulses and vegetables were affected by extreme weather events. But these numbers when read with India’s infant mortality — 26 per 1,000 live births in 2022, while the global average was 28 — and child stunting and wasting rates, of 35.5% and 18.7%, respectively, are revealing. They point to a failure of India’s health-care and safety net systems and the denial to address what is apparent, namely, climate change that has already begun to cast a long shadow on India’s food security.