India drops two places in hunger index

INDIA has dropped two places to rank 67th amongst 84 developing nations in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2010, with alarmingly high levels of hunger, undernourished and stunted children and poorly fed women.RAHUL BEDI in New Delhi

It is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children under the age of five, based on data from 2003-2008 in the report released by the Food Policy Institute in Washington on Monday.

Even Sudan, North Korea and Pakistan ranked higher than India, despite its booming economy and much touted annual growth rate averaging over 8 per cent for several consecutive years.

Food insecurity was so rampant across India even though it was the world’s largest producer of milk and edible oils and the second largest producer of wheat and sugar, that it was clubbed with minor economies like Bangladesh, Timor-Leste and Yemen.

The report also revealed that the increase in hunger in India was in inverse proportion to its economic growth. At the beginning of the liberalisation era in the early 1990s, for instance, when India broke free of its state-dominated economy opting for the free market model, 24 per cent of its population of over one billion people was undernourished.

The situation marginally improved to 22 per cent between 2004 and 2006 but it deteriorated further as the latest figure shows a 43.5 per cent decline between 2003-08.

The analysis also revealed that economic growth in India’s agricultural sector lagged seriously behind that in other sectors, resulting in a negative impact on poverty alleviation and hunger across local rural communities.

In addition, the lower castes and certain ethnic minorities were discriminated against, pushing them further into impoverishment and starvation. Gender discrimination too impacted adversely on the situation.

Officials concede that the fruits of these achievements have remained confined to just a handful with social justice not even a mirage for the vast majority of Indians.