Despite witnessing high economic growth during the last few years, India has been ranked below many of its neighbouring countries like China and Pakistan, a global hunger index published on Monday by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), said.
One of the few economies to register healthy growth while large parts of the world see a recession, India has been ranked 67th, well below China (9th), Sri Lanka (39th), Pakistan (52nd) and Nepal (56th). The index rated 84 countries on the basis of three key indicators?prevalence of child malnutrition, rate of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.
?India has a bulk of malnourished people in the world,? Ashok Gulati, director, Asia, IFPRI, said. However, Gulati said the index relied on the data by NSSO 61st round based on the data collected during 2004-5 while many other countries have latest data to offer.
In India, high index scores are driven by high levels of children being underweight resulting from the low nutritional and social status of women in the country, the report noted. The country is also home to 42% of the world?s underweight children while Pakistan has just 5%, it said.
?The economic performance and hunger levels are inversely correlated. In South and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Timor-Leste are among countries with hunger levels considerably higher than their gross national income per capita,? the IFPRI report said.
?Under-nutrition in the first two years of life threatens a child?s life and can jeopardise physical, motor and cognitive development. It is therefore, of particular importance that we take concerted action to combat hunger, especially among young children,? the report stressed. The report also added that global food security is under stress, though the world?s leaders, through the first millennium development goal, aimed to halve the proportion of hungry people between 1990 and 2015.
?The 2010 world Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows some improvement over the 1990 world GHI, falling from 19.8 points to 15.1 or by almost one-quarter. The index for hunger in the world, however, remains serious,? it noted.
The number of hungry people has increased. In 2009, on the heels of a global food price crisis and in the midst of recession, the number of undernourished peopled surpassed one billion, although recent estimates by the UN body Food and Agriculture Organisation suggest that the number will have dropped to 925 million in 2010, it added.