Why we need a more comprehensive index than the Global Hunger Index

Source: The post is based on an article “Why we need a more comprehensive index than the Global Hunger Index” published in The Indian Express on 31^st October 2022.

Syllabus: GS 2 – Social Justice –

Relevance: Problems with GHI 2022

News: India has ranked 107 among 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI, 2022). This has raised concern over the policy of the government in tackling hunger especially in the children.

However, it has raised the lacunae over the methodology of calculating hunger by GHI and problems associated with it.

What are the problems with GHI?

Problems with Indicators

Three of the four indicators used for calculation of the GHI are related to the health of children and therefore the index does not represent the entire population.

The indicator that estimates the proportion of undernourished population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000.

The other variables that GHI uses are stunting (low height for age), wasting (low weight for height) of children and mortality rate of children under 5 years.

Therefore, the government has said that the data provided by GHI 2022 mostly reflects the health of the children rather than the health of the entire country.

Further, the problem of stunting and wasting is multidimensional and not just because of hunger. Thus, it requires a focus on female education, access to immunization, and better sanitation facilities.

Problems of food shortages

GHI 2022 suggests that India is facing food shortages and many Indians do not have access to food. However, this is not true.

India has been giving free food (rice/wheat), 10/kg per person per month to more than 800 million people since April 2020 in the pandemic. It also exported more than 30 MMT of cereals in 2021.

This distribution and export have helped in tackling starvation not only in India but around the world. India has also been applauded for its effort by multilateral agencies like the UNDP, IMF, World Bank, etc.

Therefore, the government has raised concern that GHI does not include free food under the PMGKY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana) but instead relies on an opinion survey of 3,000 in a country of 1.4 billion.

On the other hand, the authors GHI say that NSSO’s consumption data has not been generated after 2011 which made them rely on the sample size.

What can be the course of action?

The authors of the GHI index should use the calorie intake based on FAO’s food balance sheets because there are problems even with the NSSO consumption data.

For example, according to the research at ICRIER, calories consumption for 2019 was estimated at 2,581 calories while the NSSO consumption survey of 2011 is stuck at 2088 calories.

Therefore, more research is needed by the authors to produce GHI which will eventually improve India’s ranking.

Further a more comprehensive index like the Multi-dimensional Poverty (MPI) index of the UNDP than the GHI is needed to get the status of the entire population.