India Suffers with More Hunger than Pakistan and Bangladesh: Global Report
India’s rank is a poor 102 among 117 countries in the new Global Hunger Index (GHI). The annual index measures and tracks hunger at the global, national, and regional levels. It also assesses progress and setbacks in combating hunger.
According to the 2019 GHI report, India is now ranked below Pakistan (94), Bangladesh (88), and Sri Lanka (66) among South Asian nations. According to the report, India is among the 45 countries that have serious levels of hunger. Worse, India’s rank has gone down by two points from the last year’s index.
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“In India, just 9.6% of all children between six to 23 months of age are fed a minimum acceptable diet. As of 2015-2016, 90% of Indian households used an improved drinking water source while 39% of households had no sanitation facilities,” said the report.
Although India’s Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi claimed on October 2 this year that rural India is ‘Open Defecation Free’ (ODF), the GHI report suggests that “open defecation is still practiced in India”.
The report praises efforts of two countries in South Asia in fighting hunger – Nepal and Bangladesh.
The GHI scores countries on a 100-point “severity scale” where zero is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst. With a score of 30.3, India suffers from a level of hunger that is serious.
