India ranks 94 out of 107 nations
EXPERTS BLAME POOR IMPLEMENTATION PROCESSES, SILOED APPROACH IN TACKLING MALNUTRITION BEHIND THE LOW RANKING
Press Trust of India
India ranked 94 among 107 nations in the Global Hunger Index 2020 and was in the ‘serious’ hunger category with experts blaming poor implementation processes, lack of effective monitoring, siloed approach in tackling malnutrition and poor performance by large states behind the low ranking. Last year, India’s rank was 102 out of 117 countries.
Neighbouring Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan too were in the ‘serious’ category but ranked higher than India in this year’s hunger index. While Bangladesh ranked 75, Myanmar and Pakistan were in the 78th and 88th position respectively. Nepal in 73rd and Sri Lanka in 64th position were in ‘moderate’ hunger category, the report showed.
Seventeen nations, including China, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, Cuba and Kuwait, shared the top rank with GHI scores of less than five, the website of the Global Hunger Index, that tracks hunger and malnutrition, said on Friday. According to the report released on Friday, 14% of India’s population was undernourished.
It also showed the country recorded a 37.4 % stunting rate among children under five and a wasting rate of 17.3% The under-five mortality rate stood at 3.7 %.
Wasting is children who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition. Stunting is children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.
Data from 1991 through 2014 for Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan showed that stunting was concentrated among children from housereductions holds facing multiple forms of deprivation, including poor dietary diversity, low levels of maternal education, and household poverty.
During this period, India experienced a decline in underfive mortality, driven largely by a decrease in deaths from birth asphyxia or trauma, neonatal infections, pneumonia, and diarrhoea, the report stated.
“However, child mortality, caused by prematurity and low birth weight, increased particularly in poorer states and rural areas. Prevention of prematurity and low birthweight is identified as a key factor with the potential to reduce under-five mortality in India, through actions such as better antenatal care, education, and nutrition as well as in anaemia and oral tobacco use,” it said. Experts think that poor implementation processes, lack of effective monitoring and siloed approaches to tackling malnutrition often result in poor nutrition indices.
Purnima Menon, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, said the performance of large states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh need to be improved to see an overall change of India’s ranking.
“The national average is affected a lot by the states like UP and Bihar... the states which actually have a combination of high levels of malnutrition and they contribute a lot to the population of the country.
“Every fifth child born in India is in Uttar Pradesh. So if you have a high level of malnutrition in a state that has a high population, it contributes a lot to India’s average. Obviously, then, India’s average will be slow to move,” she told PTI.