Islamabad, October 19, 2020 (PPI-OT):In total embarrassment to Modi-led fascist Indian government’s boasting about so-called conquests in different fields, India ranked 94 among 107 nations in the Global Hunger Index 2020 and was in the serious hunger category.
Experts blamed poor implementation processes, lack of effective monitoring and siloed approach in tackling malnutrition for the low ranking. Last year, India’s rank was 102 out of 117 countries.
Seventeen nations, including China, 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. Neighbouring Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan ranked higher than India in this year’s hunger index.
According to the report, 14 per cent of India’s population was undernourished. It also showed the country recorded a 37.4 per cent stunting rate among children under five and a wasting rate of 17.3 per cent. The under-five mortality rate stood at 3.7 per cent. Wasting is children who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition. Stunting is children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.
Purnima Menon, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, said, “Every fifth child born in India is in Uttar Pradesh. So if you have a high level of malnutrition in a state that has a high population, it contributes a lot to India’s average. Obviously, then, India’s average will be slow to move.”
GHI score is calculated on four indicators—undernourishment; child wasting, the share of children under the age of five who are wasted—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.
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