Measuring hunger across States

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction

• Despite being a major food producer with extensive food security schemes and the largest public distribution system in the world, India still grapples with significant levels of food insecurity, hunger, and child malnutrition.

Index and Report

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI), 2022, ranked India 107 among 121 countries, behind Nigeria (103) and Pakistan (99).
• The GHI provides a composite measurement and tracks undernourishment and hunger at the national level across three dimensions: calorie undernourishment, child malnutrition, and under-five mortality.
• According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report of 2022, India is home to 224.3 million undernourished people.
• Leveraging subnational data that encompasses the three dimensions of the GHI enables the development of an India-specific hunger index at the level of States and Union Territories.
• This plays a pivotal role in evaluating the extent of undernourishment at a more localised scale, which is critical for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals of eradicating hunger and malnutrition.

The State Hunger Index

• The GHI is computed using four indicators — the prevalence of calorie undernourishment; and of stunting, wasting, and mortality among children below the age of five; and under-five mortality rate.
• The State Hunger Index (SHI) is calculated using the same indicators except calorie undernourishment, which is replaced by body mass index (BMI) undernourishment among the working-age population, as data on calorie undernourishment are not available since 2012.
• Data for stunting, wasting, and mortality among children below the age of five are sourced from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), while the prevalence of BMI undernourishment is computed using NFHS-5 (2019-21) and Wave 1 of the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (2017-18).
• The calculation of the SHI score involves combining the normalised values of the four indicators using the techniques recommended by the GHI.
• The SHI scores range between 0 and 100, with higher scores indicating more hunger.
• Scores below 10 signify low hunger, 10-20 moderate, 20-30 serious, 30-40 alarming, and 50 or above extremely alarming.

The Data

• In the SHI, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh scored 35, which places them in the ‘alarming’ category.
• Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Maharashtra, and West Bengal all scored above the national average (29).
• On the other hand, Chandigarh scored 12, and Sikkim, Puducherry, and Kerala all scored below 16.
• These States, along with Manipur, Mizoram, Punjab, Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Tamil Nadu, fall under the ‘moderate hunger’ category.
• All the other States, which scored below the national average and above 20, have a problem of ‘serious hunger’. No State falls under the ‘low hunger’ category. The impact of COVID-19 on the SHI is not captured here since post-pandemic estimates are not yet available.

Facing the reality

• While the GHI has faced significant criticism from experts regarding its conceptualisation, indicator selection, and aggregation methods, it does provide critical insight into the state of undernourishment and child nutrition.
• India’s poor performance in the GHI is primarily attributed to its high prevalence of undernourishment and child malnutrition.
• India ranks unfavourably in child wasting, performing worse than many low-income African nations.
• The NFHS-5 indicated that one-third of children under the age of five are stunted and underweight, while every fifth child suffers from wasting.

Conclusion

• Despite India’s notable progress in alleviating extreme poverty over the last 15 years, as indicated by the recent National Multidimensional Poverty Index, challenges persist in addressing the disparity in food insecurity, hunger, and child malnutrition.