Global Hunger Report 2019: India behind Nepal, Pak, B’desh

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ India has slipped to 102 position in the Global Hunger Index 2019 of 117 countries, slipping from its 2018 position of 95 and behind its neighbours Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  Seventeen countries, including 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 Wednesday.

The report, prepared jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe termed the level of hunger in India “serious”. In 2000, India was ranked 83 out of 113 countries. Now, with 117 countries in the fray, it has dropped to 102 rank. Its GHI score has also decelerated — from 38.9 in 2005 to 32 in 2010 and then from 32 to 30.3 between 2010 and 2019.

The GHI score is calculated on four indicators — undernourishment; child wasting, the share of children under the age of five who are wasted (that is, who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition); child stunting, children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition; and child mortality, the mortality rate of children under the age of five.