Global Hunger Index: Can We Compare India’s Ranking Since 2014?
India’s 2014 Global Hunger Index rank of 55 and 2017 rank of 100 shouldn’t be compared in a straightforward way.
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The Global Hunger Index (GHI) data, which was released on 12 October, created ripples in India. The report, compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), stated that India ranked 100 out of 119 countries on the GHI.
In a statement, IFPRI said that India had the third highest score in Asia – only Afghanistan and Pakistan ranked worse. With 31.4 as India's GHI score, the country sat in the "serious" category, pushing South Asia to be the worst performing region in GHI.
But the reason behind the social media outrage was not these straight facts, but an interpretation that India had slipped 45 places from 2014's rankings.
In 2014, India's GHI rank was 55 and the corresponding GHI score was 17.8.
Why Year-On-Year Comparison is Faulty
Following the outrage, IFPRI released a statement clarifying that the year-on-year comparison of the country’s score was erroneous.
The organisation explained that the GHI scores were based on current and historical data that are “continuously being revised and improved” by UN agencies that compile related data.
Apart from the continuous data revision, the methodology used for calculating the GHI reportedly changed in 2015. The organisation argued, that scores from 2014 or earlier are not comparable to scores in the reports from 2015.
Countries Lower Than India’s Score Not Included in 2014
Forty-four countries that had a score of less than 5 were not included in the 2014 report — these were essentially countries whose scores were lower than India. This means that countries with scores lower than India’s were not included.
Had those countries also been included, India’s 2014 ranking would have been not 55, but 99.
As per data availability, countries are omitted or included in the list, making year-on-year comparison inaccurate, according to the organisation.
“A country’s ranking should be understood as a snapshot for a given reference period and is meaningful as such, without comparing ranks across years,” the statement said.
India’s Condition No Better
The GHI ranking in 2017 showed that India was 100 out of 119 countries, with a score of 31.4, which placed the country in the “serious” category.
According to IFPRI, India has “consistently fallen into the upper half of the serious hunger levels” category in the past few years.
The GHI, now in its 12th year, ranks countries based on four key indicators — undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting (acute malnutrition) and child stunting. In 2017, India’s performance in the categories were as follows:
While India’s position on undernourishment is quite different from India’s status on child undernutrition, stunting and wasting.
Although stunting has reportedly declined over time, the stagnation in wasting suggests careful analysis of the factors that underlie wasting, and relevant policy actions, is the need of the hour.
(With inputs from IFPRI, PTI)
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