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India slips on the GHI ranking: A Looming Humanitarian Crisis

Jigisha Sharma, Nayanika Mitash and Tanisha Gupta
Jan 5, 20226 min read

Updated: Jan 8, 2022


Since time immemorial, India has been considered an Agrarian country. The nation has been practicing agriculture for ages. Considered the backbone of the Indian economy, more than 60 per cent of the population depends upon agriculture for its livelihood. However, despite the fact that India produces a sufficient amount of food to feed its population, the recently released Global Hunger Report, 2021 jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe presents a very contrasting picture of the status quo. The 2nd sustainable development goal aims to achieve the objective of Zero Hunger by 2030, but this index suggests that this goal of attaining zero hunger has become a distant dream for India. India’s position in the Global health Index has slipped to 101 out of 116 countries in 2021 from 94 in 2020. So, what does this fall in rank actually mean for India? Can the Global Hunger Index rankings be taken at face value, and what does this indicate about India’s nutrition status?


IMAGE SOURCE: TOI



What is GHI?


The Global Hunger Index, in a crude sense, doesn’t just mean starvation but has layers of complex dimensions attached to it. The 3 main dimensions considered which support the calculation of the index are—inadequate food supply, child mortality rate, and undernourishment which includes child wasting and child stunting. Each of these 3 dimensions is given equal weight in the calculation of the index. With a score of 27.5 on the scale, the hunger situation of India has been declared “serious”. Unfortunately, this is not the first time India has ended up in the bottom quintile. The country's rank has been on a downward trend since 2016. Some of India’s neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, have outperformed India in this Index (Welthungerhilfe, 2021).


IMAGE SOURCE: GHI REPORT


The GHI report mentions that GHI scores and values of this year cannot be compared with earlier reports and since the countries included in the ranking change over the years, the ranking cannot fully show the improvement or deterioration over the years and cannot be taken in absolute value to mark India’s progress. At the same time, however, it does not take away the focus from the prevalence of malnutrition that exists in our country and which can potentially lead to a chronic hunger crisis. Even though the GHI report has been challenged by the Indian Government, the impending hunger crisis in front of India poses a major threat to its growth.


According to FAO estimates in the study 'The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2020,' 189.2 million people in India are malnourished. According to this metric, 14 per cent of India's population is malnourished (FAO, 2020). There have been innumerable debates regarding the authenticity of these surveys and reports with people criticising them by disregarding the metrics of assessment as an inaccurate method for assessing the hunger statistics. But at the same time, we should know that even if we snub the global data, the statistics provided by the Indian government are self-sufficient to prove that hunger and malnutrition have been a very big concern for India since the very beginning. The undernourished population determined by the use of income estimates showed a decline in real food expenditure for 2017-18 from 2011-12. And as for the malnutrition indicators among the children, the data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) for 2019-20 shows that Child Stunting, (referred to as the Share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflects chronic undernutrition) has increased from 2015-16. Many states have shown worsening malnutrition in 2019-20 as compared to 2015-16. (Team, 2021)


So, why is India falling behind?


1. Climate change

Due to urbanisation and rising population demand for food is expected to rise by 60 per cent but the food supply and agricultural yield—as a consequence of climate change, declining rainfall levels, and reckless agricultural practices—have created a severe demand-supply shortage worsening the situation of accessibility to nutrient-rich food (Reddy, 2019).


2. Land Fragmentation:

Land fragmentation and marginal holdings of land have also impacted the yield of agriculture hence impacting the availability of food.


3. Administrative inefficiencies:

  • The prevalence of moderate to severe food insecurity in India rose by about 6.8 percentage points in 2018-20, which occurred at a time when the government possessed 100 million tonnes of food grains in its godowns, far beyond any country's food inventories (Bansal, 2021). Despite having a generous food surplus as a result of the powerful farm lobby which forces the government to buy food grains, India faces this malnutrition crisis. When the government purchases food grains at higher prices from farmers it makes the staples more expensive. Ration shops and the PDS system were meant to ensure that the cost of the MSP is not borne by the dire consumers. However, these systems are fraught with corruption and distribution bottlenecks thereby falling victim to administrative inefficiencies and unethical practices (Michael Massing, 2003).

  • Aadhaar, India's biometric-linked identity number, has proven a major roadblock to food security. Indians must have this unique ID connected to their respective accounts, such as ration cards, in order to access government services. Lawyers and campaigners have petitioned to India's Supreme Court, stating that 20-40 million ration cards were revoked due to their lack of Aadhaar connectivity. According to reports, failure to integrate Aadhaar with manual entry errors has resulted in individuals being refused basic food grains, resulting in famine deaths in numerous states (Aadhaar as a Hurdle: On Authentication Failures and Welfare Delivery, 2021).


4. Fall in Real income:

There has been a significant drop in the real income for a majority of Indians at the bottom of the pyramid. Inflationary trends in food prices have aggravated the severity of the situation. Since the past five years, there has been a sharp decline in the economy, affecting the income of the poorest. More than 20% of India's population subsists on less than Rs. 100 per day. Because of financial problems, many people are unable to obtain adequate nutritional meals. According to a report by CBGA, “India continues to have the largest population of food-insecure people accounting for 22 percent of the global burden of food insecurity.” Depletion in savings as a result of plummeting incomes will heighten the proportion of food insecure people in India hence negatively impacting children’s nutrition (CBGA, 2019).


5. Poor maternal health:

Due to lack of resources, constrained access to nutritious food due to gender discrimination and due to social problem of early marriage, mothers in India remain undernourished during their pregnancy. This, in turn, affects the infant’s growth resulting in child wasting and stunting (Jebaraj, 2020).


6. COVID 19 pandemic:

COVID-19 played the role of a catalyst in the domain of hunger and malnutrition in the country causing disruption to robust food delivery programmes like mid-day meal schemes and Anganwadi services. Massive large-scale migration has also affected the malnutrition among children which has created geographical and administrative exclusion of children from government schemes (BBC, n.d.).


Government Response


Government is implementing several schemes and programmes under the Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services Scheme as direct targeted interventions to address the problem of malnutrition in the country. Numerous initiatives during the COVID-19 period such as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna (PMGKAY) and Atmanirbhar Bharat Scheme (ANBS) have been taken by the Government of India. POSHAN Abhiyan launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2018, targets the reduction of stunting, undernutrition, anaemia (among young children, women, and adolescent girls). Also, Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, a centrally sponsored scheme executed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development is a maternity benefit programme being implemented in all districts of the country with effect from 1st January 2017. (Global Hunger Index, 2021, 2021)


According to “Power of nutrition”, “For every dollar invested in nutrition, a country can generate $16 in returns.”(Why Nutrition? n.d.). Despite its significance in economic development, the union budget of 2021-2022 has seen a 27 per cent drop in fund allocation to nutrition of children and women (Gupta, 2021). Though there are schemes in place, this lackluster response and insufficient budget allocation can aggravate the hunger crisis. Grassroots delivery of these schemes is key. Increasing community involvement in combating malnutrition, creating a behavioural change in food consumption to nutrient-rich meals instead of just focusing on calorie intake, and focusing on schemes targeted at improving mother’s health can help India conquer this crisis.

By:-

Jigisha Sharma

Nayanika Mitash

Tanisha Gupta

(2nd Year)




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