Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury on Sunday hit out at the Central government over India’s poor ranking in the International Hunger Index and alleged that the Centre is not ready to accept any international figures.

Speaking to ANI, Yechury said, “The present government is not ready to accept any international figures. The country is declining at every level. Look at the economic scale, unemployment or even the kind of propaganda that is going on in the form of politics of violence, there is an atmosphere of fear, and there is a decline in every area.”

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“The government says that there are 121 countries and all of them agreed to the Hunger Index but ours did not believe because it showed a decline. It is known that crores of people have become poor who were not poor before COVID-19 but instead of giving relief to them, the Centre is busy giving a tax-relief and waiving loans to the rich,” CPI(M) General Secretary told ANI.

He further alleged that the Central government did not provide any relief to the poor and this decline (Global Hunger Index) is “very serious”.
The Indian government outright rejected the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022 report, showing New Delhi in the 107th position out of 121 countries.

The Centre called the data an “erroneous measure of hunger” that suffers from “serious methodological issues” as the country was noted to lag behind its neighbours– Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal in the current GHI 2022.

“The Index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. 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,” a statement by the government of India on Global Hunger Report 2022 read on Saturday.

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.

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 the Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3000.

The statement also 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 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 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, it said.