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Despite years of robust economic growth, India scores lower than nearly 25 sub-Saharan countries in the Global Hunger Index
India, the world’s largest foodgrain producer, also has the world’s largest hungry population -- over 200 million. It ranks a poor 66th among 88 developing and transitional countries in the 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI-2008), says a report released by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), ahead of World Food Day (October 16). Among the 17 major Indian states, Madhya Pradesh had the most severe hunger levels, followed by Jharkhand and Bihar. Even states that experienced good economic growth like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh had high levels of hunger. Hunger levels ranged from ‘serious’ to ‘extremely alarming’, with 12 states in the ‘alarming’ category. Not one state witnessed ‘low hunger’ or ‘moderate hunger’. Even relatively prosperous Punjab, and other states like Kerala, Haryana and Assam now fall within the ‘serious’ bracket. “Hunger and malnutrition are often rooted in poverty. Part of the solution rests with increasing investments in agriculture and poverty-reduction programmes,” says Ashok Gulati, IFPRI director in Asia. When compared to other countries on the index, Madhya Pradesh ranked 81st, level with Chad; Punjab was 33rd, below Gabon, Honduras and Vietnam. Maharashtra and Orissa ranked 66th, equivalent to India, while Gujarat ranked 69th, with Haiti. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were 60th, with Guinea. In South Asia, countries like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan fared better than India in their drive against hunger. Even countries like Laos, Cambodia and Burkina Faso ranked higher than India. India’s slightly better performance over Bangladesh was because of higher agricultural productivity. But it fared worse than Bangladesh in the area of child mortality. The Democratic Republic of Congo scored the worst on the index, followed by Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ethiopia. Among the better-fed countries, Mauritius ranked 1st, followed by Jamaica, Moldova, Cuba and Peru. China ranked 15th, Thailand 23rd, Sri Lanka 39th, Nepal 57th and Pakistan 61st. India’s State Hunger Index (ISHI) was measured for the first time in this exercise by IFPRI, which is one of the 15 affiliated institutions of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). This is the third year that IFPRI has calculated a multi-dimensional measure of global hunger worldwide, taking into account over 80 developing and least developed countries as regards proportion of undernourished population, prevalence of underweight children under five, and proportion of children dying before the age of five. The figures for India were arrived at by making use of data from National Family Health Survey-3 and the National Sample Survey Organisation. India’s poor performance was driven by its high child undernutrition and calorie insufficiency. Underweight children made the greatest contribution to the ISHI in most states, followed by calorie deficiency and child mortality. In states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, calorie deficiency contributed as much as underweight children. Nutrition experts attribute India’s abysmal record on malnutrition and mortality among under-5s to inadequate access to food, poor feeding practices and poor childcare practices. According to official statistics by the Indian government, around 60% of more than 10 million children in the country were malnourished until two years ago. Worse, India was listed among the 33 countries with alarming levels of hunger owing to rising food prices. “People who already had too little food for a healthy life are now finding that they can afford even less,” the report says whilst clarifying that the rankings do not reflect the current crisis of rising food prices because data used in the index come from 2006 and earlier years. But they do highlight which countries could be most vulnerable to the crisis. In the past two decades, some regions -- South and Southeast Asia, the near east and north Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean -- have made significant headway in improving food security. Nevertheless, the GHI remains high in South Asia. It is similarly high in sub-Saharan Africa where progress has been marginal especially in Congo, Eritrea, Burundi, Niger and Sierra Leone, which are at the bottom of the list. According to IFPRI, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are regions with the highest GHI scores and the highest poverty rates. “Hunger is closely tied to poverty, and countries with high levels of hunger are overwhelmingly low or low-middle-income countries,” says the report. To address the current food crisis and improve the long-term functioning of the world food system, IFPRI recommends three areas for high-priority policy action: - Productivity and research: Undertake fast-impact food production programmes in key areas, and scale up investments for sustained agricultural productivity, including agricultural science policy and appropriate finance.
- Nutrition and social protection: Expand emergency responses and humanitarian assistance to food-insecure people, and invest in social protection for nutritional improvement.
- Markets and trade: Eliminate agricultural trade restrictions and facilitate rule-based and fair global and regional trade openness; change biofuel policies; support market-oriented regulation of speculation; and implement innovative virtual grain reserve policies.
IFPRI estimates that the additional global public investment required to overcome the food crisis, and still meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, is at least US$ 14 billion per annum. Source: DNA, October 15, 2008
Financial Express, October 15, 2008
Business Standard, October 15, 2008
http://www.ifpri.org, October 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk, October 2008
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