India rejects Global Hunger Index Report 2022, says “report suffers from serious methodological issues”

New Delhi: India on Saturday rejected the Global Hunger index 2022 report, saying it suffers from serious methodological issues and chooses to deliberately ignore efforts made by Government to ensure food security for the population.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development in a statement stressed that it is a consistent effort to taint India’s image as a nation. In the recent report of the Global Hunger Index, India ranked 107 out of 121 countries with its child-wasting rate at 19.3 per cent, being the highest in the world.

“A consistent effort is yet again visible to taint India’s image as a nation that does not fulfil the food security and nutritional requirements of its population. Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of the annually released Global Hunger Index,” according to the statement released by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The statement added, “The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues.”

The statement pointed out that three out of the four indicators used for the calculation of the index are related to the health of Children and cannot be representative of the entire population.

The fourth and most important indicator estimate of the Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3000.

“The report is not only disconnected from ground reality but also chooses to deliberately ignore efforts made by the government to ensure food Security for the population, especially during the Covid Pandemic,” the statement reads.

The statement pointed out that the recent report lowers India’s rank and that also on the basis of an estimate of the Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population for India at 16.3 per cent.

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimate is based on the “Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)” Survey Module conducted through Gallop World Poll, which is an “opinion poll” based on “8 questions” with a sample size of “3000 respondents”.

The statement further added that the data collected from a minuscule sample for a country of India’s size through FIES has been used to compute PoU value for India which is not only wrong and unethical, it also reeks of obvious bias.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development in its statement said that the publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report have evidently not done their due diligence before releasing the report.

“The matter was taken up with FAO not to use such estimates based on FIES survey module data in July 2022 as the statistical output of the same will not be based on merit. Though an assurance was forthcoming that there will be further engagement on this issue, the publication of the Global Hunger Index report irrespective of such factual considerations is regrettable,” the statement reads.

“It is evident such questions do not search for facts based on relevant information about the delivery of nutritional support and assurance of food security by the Government,” the statement added.

The per capita dietary energy supply in India, as estimated by FAO from the Food Balance Sheets, has been increasing year-on-year owing to enhanced production of major agricultural commodities in the country over the years and there is absolutely no reason why the country’s undernourishment levels should increase.

In the statement, the ministry also described the measures that were taken by the government to ensure food security.