India has a problem: Hunger
The dip in the hunger index must sound alarm bells
India is languishing at the 102nd spot among 117 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) that was released by Concern Worldwide, an aid agency, on Wednesday, also World Food Day. The country’s ranking is eight spots below Pakistan (94) and 14 below Bangladesh (88). China, the only country with a population size similar to India, is ranked 25. GHI uses indicators such as undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality to calculate the levels of hunger and undernutrition, and India’s score of 30.3 means it suffers from a level of hunger that is “serious”.
There are two aspects of the 2019 GHI report that should worry the government. One, India has the highest child wasting rate of any country (20.8%). Wasting — it means low weight for a given height — is a strong predictor of mortality among children under the age of five. Second, the child stunting rate — meaning low height for a given age due to insufficient nutrient intake — is also very high at 37.9%. This is alarming because a sound foundation is critical for the development of a human being. Despite the nutrition crisis, which can also take intergenerational dimensions, the allocation for children in the 2019-2020 Union Budget has only shown a marginal increase of 0.05%, going up from 3.24% in the last fiscal to 3.29% in the current fiscal with a grant of ₹91,644.29 crore.
The Centre should also take into account the new threat that the GHI report has indicated: Climate change, which will impact food security. This means that the standard inputs to tackle stunting and wasting of children — improving sanitation facilities, providing clean water, better maternal health and early childhood nutrition — will not be enough. Further investments are needed to help farmers to develop and carry out context-specific strategies that will strengthen food and nutrition security. One key aspect of adaptation strategy would be to secure the land and water rights, including customary rights, of indigenous peoples and rural communities because climate change will lead to competition for resources, and the weakest and the marginalised cannot be left alone to tackle the challenge that can affect one of the basic blocks of life: food.