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Global Hunger Index

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Every October the Global Hunger Index (GHI) is released. It’s a tool that attempts to measure hunger globally; prepared by European NGOs “Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe”.

Hungry Kya?

A war of words has followed the release of the Global Hunger Index (GHI), 2022 which ranked India at number 107 out of 121 countries.

Detention of the alien

There are critical issues that cry out for urgent policy intervention. India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index is but one of them. The illegal immigrants and the construction of detention camps to house the proliferating numbers have given a new dimension to a declining economy with dwindling jobs. Thus the discourse over citizenship, legal or illegal, is not only to pit one category of people against another on religious and ethnic lines, and create a false sense of urgency in the matter of eviction.

Perilous path

The increase in wealth did not lead to any appreciable improvement in our ranking in the Global Hunger Index which would indicate that "trickle-down economics" is not working in our case; the lot of the poor does not seem to be improving while the rich are definitely getting richer. The inescapable conclusion is that better and leak-proof implementation of poverty alleviation programmes and more direct interventions to end poverty and hunger are needed.

Hunger pangs

There is little evidence of basing strategies, for instance, on low-cost, locally-available food, which may provide far greater sustainability and be easier to deliver through ongoing nutrition programmes.