• Recently, the government has rejected the Global Hunger Index report, claiming it is an effort to ''taint'' India.
• India was rank 107 among 121 countries in the GHI, 2022.
• It also has questioned its methodology without noticing the substantial efforts made by the government to improve access to foodgrains by India’s poor.

Limitations of GHI

• No database for regional level:
• GHI measures and ranks countries on a hunger index at the Global, Regional, and National levels.
• The Data of the sub-national level isn’t included where some Indian states fare better.
• Disproportional indicators of GHI:
• The GHI’s stated aim is to reduce hunger around the world.
• But its methodology focuses disproportionately on less than five-year-olds.
• No far-reaching picture:
• GHI directs governmental attention to cross-national comparisons, resulting in the rejection of underlying issues and side-tracking the public discourse.
• Lack of theoretical clarity:  The preamble of GHI describes:
• “Communities, civil society organisations, small producers, farmers, and indigenous groups… shape how access to nutritious food is governed.”
• This suggests that GHI uses childhood mortality and nutrition indicators but sees hunger as a food production challenge.
• However, as per FAO (Food & Agricultural Organization):
• India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of grain
• It is the largest producer of milk; when the per capita intake of grain, vegetables and milk has increased manifold.
• Therefore, it is unacceptable to club India with countries facing serious food shortages, which is what GHI has done.

Unusual Nomenclature of GHI V/S actual Fact

• The nomenclature of GHI suggests a link to starvation. It might seem that a lot of people in the country do not get basic food.  That is not the case for India.
• India has been giving literally free food (rice/wheat), 10/kg per person per month to more than 800 million people since April 2020 in the wake of Covid-19.
• It also exported more than 30 MMT of cereals in 2021.
• This helped avert starvation deaths not only in India but also in many other countries.
• India’s gesture has been applauded by multilateral agencies like the UNDP, IMF, World Bank, etc. 
• The GHI hasn’t consider the mega scheme of free food under the PMGKY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana)
• Instead, it has relied on an “opinion survey” of 3,000 in a country of 1.4 billion.
• The use of the word hunger is abhorrent given the facts, but there is no denying that in India, nutrition, particularly child nutrition, continues to be a problem.

The NFHS Reliability of Hunger

• The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) does a good job of providing comparative state-level data, including the main pointers that determine health and nutrition.
• NFHS provides estimates of:
• Underweight (low weight for age),
• Stunting (low height for age)
• Wasting (low weight for height).
• These conditions affect preschool children (those less than 6 years of age) disproportionately.
• It also compromises a child’s physical and mental development with increase in the vulnerability to infections.
• Moreover, undernourished mothers (attributable to social and cultural practices,) give birth to low-birth-weight babies that remain susceptible to infections.
• That can make them handicaps which can ruin their childhood and adolescence.

Issues related to Nutrition & Solutions

Breastfeeding:

• It is one of the first child nutrition challenges.
• WHO and UNICEF recommendation: The breastfeeding should be initiated within the first hour of birth and infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months.
• The NFHS 5 on Breastfeeding:
• The % improvement of children who were exclusively breastfed when under six months, rose from 55 per cent in NFHS 4 to 64 per cent in NFHS 5.
• This indicates progress, but it is not enough.
• Only 42 % of infants are breastfed within one hour of birth, which is the recommended norm.
• By not being breastfed, an infant is denied the benefits of acquiring antibodies against infections, allergies and even protection against several chronic conditions.

Young child feeding practices:

• The root cause of this widespread practices includes:
• Not introducing semi-solid food after six months
• Prolonging breastfeeding well beyond the recommended six months
• Giving food lacking in nutritional diversity
• NFHS 5 shows that the improvement has been marginal over the last two reports and surprisingly, states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Assam, UP and Gujarat are at the tail end.

Poor nutrition:

• The third issue is the outcome of poor nutrition.
• According to NFHS 5, the percentage of stunted, wasted and underweight children is 36 per cent, 19 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.

Good Food:

• It is worrisome that states like Bihar, UP and Jharkhand have fallen from their own levels five years ago.
• Overall, there has been an eight-percentage point increase in children suffering from anaemia from 59 per cent in NFHS 4 to 67 per cent in NFHS 5.
• This has a lot to do with the mistaken belief that manufactured snacks are “good food”.
• This phenomenon has been found in urban slums and in villages.

No Cleanliness

• The NGO named CHETNA that works for women’s and children’s health and nutrition across three states (Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan) has observed home practices:
• The young children are allowed to run around while eating, exposing the food to flies, dust and heat.
• The children are weaned on watery liquid from cooked grain when they need nutrition-dense food to develop.

Several initiatives have been added to resolve the problems, but most beneficiaries of these food distribution programmes are kids attending anganwadis or schools, adolescents, and pregnant and lactating mothers. This must continue but newborns, infants, and toddlers need attention too. Which can help mothers to better the lives of their infants and toddlers right inside the home by measuring and demonstrating how much diet, food intake and child-rearing practices matter.