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India's score in the 'Global Hunger Index' back to 1996 levels
-The Business Standard

China, India's nearest economic rival has the second best score in the world

Despite steady economic growth and robust social sector spending, India's score in Global Hunger Index has returned back to the 1996 level raising questions over the speed at which it has brought down the proportion of undernourished people, underweight children and child mortality.

According to the findings of the Global Hunger Index 2012 by  the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), India’s latest score in the Hunger Index (GHI) has once again returned to the 1996 levels, after showing a minor deterioration between 1996 and 2001. Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe also contributed in framing the annual Hunger Index.

In 1990, India’s GHI score as monitored by IFPRI was 30.3, which fell to 22.6 in 1996.  But again rose to 24.2 in 2001 and stood at 22.9 in 2012, much closer to 1996 levels. The lower the index, lower is number of incidence of hunger. Overall, India is ranked 65th among 79 major countries where hunger is prevalent, much below smaller nations like Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan and Nepal.

India’s nearest economic rival, China has the second best score in GHI among the entire global world. Not, only that even Bangladesh has overtaken India on a range of social indicators including how fast it has reduced child mortality, the report showed

This effectively means that from 1996 onwards, India’s hunger index has shown little improvement, despite India’s gross national income (GNI) per capita almost doubling between 1995-97 to 2008-10, the report said. The GHI index combines three equally weighted indicators like undernourishment, child underweight and child mortality in one index.

"In India, 43.5 per cent of the children under five are underweight, which accounts for almost two-thirds of the country's alarmingly high GHI score. From 2005-2012, India is ranked second to last on child underweight -- below Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal and Bangladesh," the report said.
Later talking to reporters, senior officials from IFPRI said that the biggest challenge in India is to translate the good sounding intentions into practical results on ground.

“India has lagged behind in improving its GHI score despite strong economic growth. After a small increase between 1996 and 2001, India’s GHI score fell only slightly, and the latest GHI returned to about the 1996 level,” the report said.

In comparison, China had a managed to consistently lower its hunger index scores from 11.8 in 1990 to 8.9 in 1996 to 6.7 in 2001 and in 2012 it stood at 5.1, among the lowest in the world.

For India, the report acknowledges that it has arrived at that conclusion by including child mortality data from 2010, FAO data on undernourishment from 2006–08, and India’s latest available nationally representative data on child underweight collected in 2005–06.

“Given that the Government of India has failed to monitor national trends in child under-nutrition for more than six years, any recent progress in the fight against child under-nutrition cannot be taken into account by the 2012 GHI. Nonetheless, even bearing in mind that possible recent advances in the fight against child under nutrition are not yet visible in the latest GHI, India’s track record is disappointing,” the report said.

Globally, the report said that world hunger has somewhat declined since 1990, but still remains at an ‘serious’. The highest GHI scores are in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

“South Asia reduced its GHI score significantly between 1990 and 1996 – mainly by reducing the share of underweight children—but could not maintain the rapid progress,” the report said.

It said sub-Saharan Africa made less progress in reducing hunger since 1990s, but caught up with South Asia since the turn of the millennium with its 2012 GHI score falling below that of South Asia.