Erroneous, suffers from serious methodological issues: Centre on Global Hunger Index report

New Delhi, Oct 15: The Centre on Saturday slammed the Global Hunger Index 2022 report which ranked India 107 out of 121 countries while accusing Ireland's largest agency of making a consistent effort to "taint India's image as a nation that does not fulfil the food security and nutritional requirements of its population."

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels as by region and by country. It is published annually by Concern Worldwide, Ireland's largest aid and humanitarian agency and Welthungerhilfe, one of the largest private aid organisations in Germany.

"A consistent effort is yet again visible to taint India's image as a Nation that does not fulfill the food security and nutritional requirements of its population. Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of the annually released Global Hunger Index," a statement from the Ministry of Women and Child Development said.

It is based on four indicators - under-nourishment, wasting (low weight for height), stunting (low height for age) and under-five mortality. Since 2014, India's performance has improved significantly on stunting and infant mortality. However, the graphs for wasting and undernourishment have shown a small upward trend, according to GHI data.

"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 health of Children and cannot be representative of the entire population. The fourth and most important indicator estimate of Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3000," it stated.

The Narendra Modi government states that the report is not only disconnected from ground reality but also chooses to deliberately ignore efforts made by the government to ensure food Security for the population, especially during the Covid Pandemic.

"Taking a one-dimensional view, the report lowers India's rank based on the estimate of Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population for India at 16.3%. The FAO estimate is based on "Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)" Survey Module conducted through Gallop World Poll, which is an "opinion poll" based on "8 questions" with a sample size of "3000 respondents". The data collected from a miniscule sample for a country of India's size through FIES has been used to compute PoU value for India which is not only wrong & unethical, it also reeks of obvious bias. The publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, have evidently not done their due diligence before releasing the report," the statement lashed out.

In 2021, India was ranked 101 out of 116 countries. Now with 121 countries in the list, it has dropped to the 107th rank. India's GHI score has also decelerated - from 38.8 in 2000 to the range of 28.2 - 29.1 between 2014 and 2022.

Seventeen countries, including China, Turkey, and Kuwait, shared the top rank with GHI score of less than five, the website of the Global Hunger Index that tracks hunger and malnutrition said on Saturday.