India has countered the annual Global Hunger Index 2022 which ranked it 107 out of 121 countries. It has questioned the method of analyzing data by the Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, Non-Government Organisations from Ireland and Germany, which jointly publishes the Global Hunger Index.
“The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues,” the Ministry of Women and Child Development said in a statement.
Criticizing the hunger index the ministry further added, “Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of the annually released Global Hunger Index. A series of measures have been taken by the government to ensure food security. It is an attempt to taint India’s image as a Nation that does not fulfill the food security and nutritional requirements of its population.”
The statement also said that the report is disconnected from the ground realities and has deliberately ignored efforts made by the government to ensure food Security for the population.
Claiming the report as one-dimensional and biased, the ministry questioned the “Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)” survey method used by the organization.
“The report lowers India’s rank based on the estimate of the Proportion of the Undernourished (PoU) population for India at 16.3%. The FAO estimate is based on the FIES Survey Module conducted through Gallop World Poll, which is an opinion poll based on “8 questions” with a sample size of 3000 respondents,” said the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The ministry stated that lowering the rank of a country like India with such a small sample size is not only wrong but unethical.
It also said that 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.