New Delhi: After the results came in of The Global Hunger Index (GHI), The Ministry of Women and Child Development on Sunday has alleged that the index completely disregards Government’s massive effort to ensure food security of the entire population during the Covid period.
“They have based their assessment on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which was conducted telephonically by Gallup. The scientific measurement of undernourishment would require measurement of weight and height…The report completely disregards Government’s massive effort to ensure food security of the entire population during the Covid period, verifiable data on which are available. The opinion poll does not have a single question on whether the respondent received any food support from the Government or other sources,” The Ministry of Women and Child Development said.
It further alleged the key indicator used in GHI are inflated as there are only 3.9% anganwadi children found to be undernourished, the Government said, ““The real time data of beneficiaries registered on the Anganwadi platform include 7.79 crore children aged between 6 months to 6 years as per real-time Poshan Tracker data [as on 16-10-2021]. Corresponding number of undernourished children reported on Poshan Tracker is 30.27 lakh which comes to only 3.9%,” according to a reply from the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
Government also said that the methodology used is wrong, “These beneficiaries are representative of the poorest strata of society and the low levels of undernourishment in them surely reflects that the Indian data is highly inflated due to wrong methodology.”
The GHI was declared on Saturday on which India slipped from the 94th position to 101st position. It was shocking for India as all the neighbouring countries like Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh ranked higher on the index.
Selective approach
The Government has also alleged that there has been a “selective approach adopted by the publishing agencies to deliberately lower India’s rank on the GHI 2021” by relying on higher values of indicators such as stunting and wasting from different datasets available.
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