Even after existing for more than seven decades as a free nation and earning the status of one of the promising emerging economies, India has continued to fail in overcoming one of its fundamental challenge-hunger. The 2020 edition of the Global Hunger Index (GHI) has just arrived and just like the earlier years, it’s nothing but disgrace. And the disgrace is not a moderate one as all the neighbours in the subcontinent generally considered as ‘tiny’ in every sense have done better than India who aspires to be a 5 trillion dollar economy within four years from now. In a country packed with ‘contrasts’, it’s yet another addition- very high when it comes to dreams and promises and of an equally low quotient while performing.

Published collaboratively by Ireland’s humanitarian agency Concern Worldwide and Germany’s aid agency Welthungerhilfe, the GHI is a very important document reflecting an undistorted picture of where one stands in terms of defeating hunger, a curse for mankind. The extremity of hunger has been calculated taking into account four indicators- undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting and mortality rate for children under five. Based on the values of these indicators, the index is determined on a 100-point scale and a score of less than 9.9 is considered to be ‘low hunger’, between 10-19.9 ‘moderate’, between 20-34.9 ‘serious’, between 35-49.9 ‘alarming’ and over 50 ‘extremely alarming’. This year’s report takes into account the performance of 107 countries and India with a score of 27.2 is in the zone of “serious” and has ranked 94^th. Comparison is an essential aspect of the indices of this sort and while doing that it will be an embarrassment to learn that Nepal has ranked 73^rd, Sri Lanka 64^th, Bangladesh 75^th, Myanmar 78^th and even Pakistan which sustains itself almost annually by borrowing heavily from global aid organisations, the 88^th. The other unsettling revelations from the report are-14% of the country’s population is undernourished, stunting rate (an irreversible physical and mental damage) among children under five is at an alarming level of 37.4%, a wasting (low weight for height for children below five) rate at 17.3% and a mortality rate of 3.7% among children in the same age bracket- all due to acute undernutrition which has gone up significantly during 2015-2019.

Most experts agree that the fruits of development are not reaching the intended beneficiaries, resulting in rising inequality, thereby leading to poverty, the more direct fallouts of which are hunger and malnutrition. The report is yet another wake-up call for the country’s policy framers that unless there is more government investment to improve public healthcare, nutrition, education, social security and gender empowerment, ‘disgraces’ like this will become annual affairs.