India Slips 6 Places In Global Hunger Index; Odisha Among 4 States Driving Child Stunting Decline

New Delhi: India has slipped further in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022 from the 101st position in 2021. Of the 121 countries, India (107) is ranked behind its neighbours Nepal (81), Pakistan (99), Sri Lanka (64), and Bangladesh (84).

The GHI, which lists countries by ‘severity’, has given India a score of 29.1, which falls in the ‘serious’ category of hunger level.

China, Turkey, Kuwait and 14 other nations share the top spot with a score of less than five.

While India’s performance since 2014 has improved significantly on stunting (from 38.7 per cent in 2012-16 to 35.5 per cent in 2017-21) and infant mortality (from 4.6 per cent in 2014 to 3.3 per cent in 2020), wasting and undernourishment graphs have shown a small upward trend. India’s child-wasting rate of 19.3 per cent in 2017-21 from 15.1 per cent in 2012-16 is the highest for any country in the world, the GHI website, which tracks hunger and malnutrition, said on Saturday.

“The example of India shows the importance of considering the subnational context when designing programs and policies to target child stunting. Researchers investigated the factors that contributed to a decline in stunting in four Indian states between 2006 and 2016: Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu,” the report said.

Notably, India has been recording higher scores since 2014 when its GHI score had come down to  28.2 from an alarming 38.8 in 2000