New Delhi: Amongst a total of 121 countries, India has fallen to the 107th position in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022, behind its neighboring states including Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

The website of the Global Hunger Index that tracks hunger and malnutrition across the world informed on Saturday that 17 countries, including China, Turkey, and Kuwait share the top rank with GHI score of less than five.

Senior Congress leader and lawmaker P Chidambaram shared the report via his Twitter handle questioning the Modi government on the slip of India’s rank in the list.

“When will the Hon’ble PM address real issues like malnutrition, hunger, and stunting and wasting among children?”, he wrote.

When will the Hon’ble PM address real issues like malnutrition, hunger, and stunting and wasting among children?

22.4 crore people in India are considered undernourished

India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index is near the bottom — 107 out of 121 countries

— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) October 15, 2022

Last year, Narendra Modi-led central government had called the report ‘shocking’ and ‘devoid of ground reality’ after the 2021 report showed India’s fall below 100th position. The govt had further claimed that the methodology being used to calculate the hunger index globally is ‘unscientific’.

“It is shocking to find that the Global Hunger Report 2021 has lowered the rank of India on the basis of FAO (UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation) estimate on proportion of undernourished population, which is found to be devoid of ground reality and facts and suffers from serious methodological issues. The publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, have not done their due diligence before releasing the report”, the govt said in a statement.

“The methodology used by FAO is unscientific. They have based their assessment on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which was conducted telephonically by Gallup. There is no scientific methodology to measure undernourishment like availability of food grains per capita during the period. The scientific measurement of undernourishment would require measurement of weight and height, whereas the methodology involved here is based on Gallup poll based on pure telephonic estimate of the population”, it added.