We remain under nourished

We talk about the bullet train, the Bharatmala, applaud for the Doing Buisness Index and beat out chests in victory that India is rearing its head to become a super economy. All that’s fine but seems very hollow when we read that India continues to rank low rank on the hunger index. It shows that India still fares poorly when compared to other countries when it comes to under-nutrition.

 The Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has ranked India at the 100th position among 119 countries in its 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI) rankings. This index looks at under-nutrition and the good news here is that our ranking has actually been improving - under-nutrition has decreased rather than increased in India. Our GHI score has reduced from 46.2 to 31.4 between 1992 and 2017 but the underlying bad news – undernourishment remains higher than the global average.

The 2017 GHI rankings are based on the percentage of under-nourished population and three health indicators for children aged less than five years: wasting (low weight for height); stunting (low height for age) and mortality.