India Dismisses Global Hunger Report 2022 as 'Misinformation'

The recent Global Hunger Index (GHI), which, after a comprehensive set of tests, ranks a country's ability to feed its citizens, has claimed that Pakistan (99), Bangladesh (84), Nepal (81) and Sri Lanka (64) have all done better than India (107) in providing food security and answering the nutritional requirements of its population.

The Indian government has slammed the recently released Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022 which placed India 107th out of 121 countries, putting it behind Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar.

Reacting to the GHI report, India's government said in a statement that the report attempts to tarnish the country's image and present it as “a nation that does not fulfil the food security and nutritional requirements of its population”.

“Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of the annually released Global Hunger Index," the statement by the Ministry of Women and Child Development said.

The government has alleged that the report has “an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues”.

"Three out of the four indicators used to calculate the index are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population," the statement reads. "The fourth and most important indicator estimating the Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000,” the statement added.

The Indian government highlighted that the country is running the largest food security program in the world to ensure food security for its population of almost 1.4Bln.

"The report is not only disconnected from ground reality but also chooses deliberately to ignore efforts made by the government to ensure food security for the population, especially during the Covid-19 Pandemic," the statement said.

It went on to break down India's food program, focusing on how the government announced in March 2020 the distribution of additional free foodgrains to about 800Mln beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), with each subject receiving 5kg of foodgrains per month.

Dr Ashwani Mahajan, National Co-Convenor of the cultural organization Swadeshi Jagran Manch called the report "a political stunt", rebuking the German non-governmental organization Welt Hunger Hilfe (World Hunger Help) and the agency Concern Worldwide for publishing it. He then reminded his listeners that a similar incident took place last year, sparking uproar in India.

"There was strong opposition from India on the data and methodology used in the same publication and at the time the World Food Organization said that these errors would be corrected. But now, once again using the same wrong data and methodology, this year's report is released, and the incompetence of this institution is becoming clear," Mahajan said.

The findings have triggered a backlash among Indian netizens, who called the agency biased and a purveyor of unsubstantiated claims.

Screenshot of Twitter reactions on the recently released Global Hunger Index (GHI) that ranks India at 107 positions out of 121 countries

© Photo : Twitter/@andy_garde

Screenshot of Twitter reactions on the recently released Global Hunger Index (GHI) that ranks India at 107 positions out of 121 countries

© Photo : Twitter/@asthana_shashi