Why in news?

India ranks 107 out of 121 countries on the Global Hunger Index in which it fares worse than all countries in South Asia barring war-torn Afghanistan. It is Published by Concern Worldwide annually, the report has been jointly prepared by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe.

Highlights

• India has slipped the rank at its serious category at 107 rank . The level of hunger in India was ‘serious’ according to the report.
• The country ranks below Sri Lanka (64), Nepal (81), Bangladesh (84) and Pakistan (99). Afghanistan is the only South Asian country that lags behind India in the listing

What is Global Hunger Index?

• It is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels.
• GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators – undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality.
• Countries are divided into five categories of hunger on the basis of their score, which are ‘low’, ‘moderate’, ‘serious’, ‘alarming’ and ‘extremely alarming
• Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger, where zero is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst

Why India has termed the report as unscientific ?

• There is no scientific methodology to measure undernourishment like availability of food grains per capita during the period
• Measurement of undernourishment would require measurement of weight and height, whereas the methodology involved here is based on Gallup poll based on a pure telephonic estimate of the population