Global Hunger Index

Why in news?

Global Hunger Index prepared by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide has been released recently.

What is the report based on?

What does the report say?

The world has made gradual, long-term progress in reducing overall hunger, but there is an uneven progress.
GHI scores for South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara reflect serious levels of hunger.
Areas of severe hunger and undernutrition stubbornly persist which reflects the human misery for millions.
Since the number of forcibly displaced people is on the rise, and hunger is often both a cause and a consequence of displacement, co-ordinated actions needs to be taken by international community, national governments, and civil society.
Around 124 million people suffer acute hunger in the world.
About 151 million children are stunted and 51 million children are wasted across the globe.
Hard-won gains are being further threatened by conflict, climate change, poor governance, and a host of other challenges.
It further warned that at least 50 nations all over the globe were on a path to miss their SDG target of achieving low-levels of hunger by the year 2030.

What is the case with India?

India has been ranked at the 103rd position among 119 countries and is among the 45 countries that have "serious levels of hunger".

The proportion of undernourished population in India has come down from 18.2% to 14.8%.
The prevalence of stunting in children below the age of five has gone down sharply from 54.2% to 38.4%.
The Under-5 child mortality rate has declined from 9.2% to 4.3%.

India is ranked below many of its neighbouring countries, including China (25), Nepal (72), Myanmar (68), Sri Lanka (67) and Bangladesh (86).

What are the concerns?

India continues to stay in the “serious” category of the GHI.
There are still way too many children suffering from stunting, which reflects chronic undernourishment.
The biggest worry is the level of wasting in Indian children, which has actually gone up over these years from 17.1% to 21%.
Wasting reflects acute malnutrition and the fact that it has gone up sharply in the past 5 to 10 yearsis a massive blot on India’s growth story.
As the report claimed that children aged 0-5 months were at the most risk of child wasting, attention to birth outcomes and breastfeeding should be an important priority for India.
There were numerous policy attempts were made both at the central and state levels such as hunger missions launched by Maharashtra to directly attack the problem of widespread hunger.
This is also coincided with the rights-based approach where mid-day meals and nutrition of mothers were also improved.
Thus the solution lies in adequately distributing nutritious food and health care services to children and lactating mothers.
Though the government was working to achieve zero hunger by 2030, it focusses on higher farm output as a tool to achieve it.
But, as various researchers have shown, child undernourishment does not go away by merely having more food grain output.
It is the distribution, along with timely availability of food that matters.

What does the report recommend?

The international community should focus resources and attention on the regions of the world where the majority of displaced people are located.
It should also provide stronger political and humanitarian support to internally displaced people.
Prioritized actions to address the special vulnerabilities and challenges of women and girls should be taken.
Certain long-term solutions, like strengthening the resilience of displaced populations by providing access to education and training, employment, healthcare, agricultural land, and markets have also been proposed.

Source: Business Standard