Editorial: Hunger pangs

Last week, the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI), ranked India 105th, placing it under the ‘serious’ category alongside 42 countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. India’s ranking was offset by that of other South Asian neighbours such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka showing better GHI scores to be listed under the 'moderate' category. India's GHI Score of 27.3 is based on the values of four component indicators: 13.7 per cent of our population is undernourished, 35.5 per cent of children under five are stunted with 18.7 per cent of them being wasted, and 2.9 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday.

The index defines undernourishment as the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake, stunted as the share of children under age five who have low height for their age to reflect “chronic” undernutrition, wasting as the share of children under five who have low weight for their height due to “acute” undernutrition, and mortality refers to the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments. Interestingly, the study was made public a few days prior to World Food Day, observed on Oct 16, by organisations concerned with eradicating hunger and ensuring food security.

The report, now in its 19th edition, is a tool employed by international humanitarian agencies to measure and track hunger levels with GHI scores based on under-nourishment and child mortality indicators across 127 countries. The study highlights that hunger levels will remain high in many of the world's poorest countries for several decades in the absence of more progress in measures to tackle the issue. The report paints a bleak picture with regards to the possibility of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, which as of now looks highly unlikely.

The global scenario vis-a-vis food insufficiency is staggering — with around 733 million people facing hunger each day due to lack of access to a sufficient amount of food, while about 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Conflict and civil strife, such as those in Gaza and Sudan have also been zeroed in as reasons for the all-pervasive food crises. With regard to India, a recent analysis pointed out that the share of the rural Indian population in 2011 which was unable to afford the cost of a required diet (CoRD) even with 100 per cent of the income spent on food would be 63.3% or 527.4 mn people.

Experts believe that amidst subsidies and market regulation of prices of basic food items such as cereals, low affordability cannot be considered as the sole factor for non-compliance with the required food intake. Even among the cream of the population, i.e. among the richest 5% of Indian households, people consume significantly lower quantities of protein-rich food as against processed food. Such trends have more to do with lack of availability, accessibility, awareness as well as acceptability.

A silver lining for India is its exceptional strides in the field of food security — like the Green and White Revolutions, as well as the Blue Transformation for agrifood systems. The National Food Security Act of 2013 offers food entitlements to over 800 mn individuals. Stakeholders have called for improving market access for farmers, overcoming infrastructural limitations and supply chain efficiencies. There is also a need to provide education, technology, financial support and resources to vulnerable agrarian communities, especially with an aim to create a sustainable agricultural system, and a virtuous cycle of food security.