New Delhi: A day after the release of the Global Hunger Report 2021, in which the position of India slipped to 101 among 116 countries, the government on Friday claimed that the methodology used by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is unscientific as the publishers have based their assessment on the results of a 'four question' opinion poll, which was conducted telephonically by Gallup.
Nullifying the findings of the Global Hunger Report (GHR) 2021, the Ministry of Women and Children Development (WCD) said, "It is 'shocking' to find that the GHR 2021 has lowered the rank of India on the basis of FAO estimate on the proportion of the undernourished population, which is found to be devoid of ground reality and facts and suffers from serious methodological issues."
Raising questions over the methodology adopted by the publishers of the GHR, the WCD Ministry said, "The scientific measurement of undernourishment would require measurement of weight and height, whereas the methodology involved here is based on Gallup poll based on a pure telephonic estimate of the population."
The Global Hunger Index comprises four indicators – child mortality, child wasting (the share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height), child stunting (the share of children under the age of five who have low height for their age), and undernourishment (the share of the population that is undernourished).
"As per this report, India's position on the first indicator, child mortality, has improved in 2021 compared with 2020, while the position on two indicators -- child wasting and child stunting -- has remained unchanged in 2021 compared with 2020," the ministry said.
"The position on the indicator undernourishment has deteriorated with an increase of 1.3 per cent points in 2021 over 2020. FAO is the data source for this indicator of the Global Hunger Report 2021," the ministry said.
The fall in ranking is attributable to the latest estimates reported by FAO in their report 'The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021' on the proportion of people who could not have their minimum dietary energy requirement fulfilled during the last one year covering Covid-19 pandemic period, the ministry said.
In order to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic-induced loss of job/business and reduction in income levels, FAO has made use of the results of a 'four question' opinion poll, conducted by Gallup telephonically, it said.
The ministry further said clarified that it is the effect of this opinion poll-based assessment that FAO has increased the value of 'proportion of population undernourished' from 14.0 per cent for the previous period 2017-19 to 15.3 per cent for the latest period 2018-20.
The GHR 2021 and FAO report have completely ignored the efforts of the government initiated as part of economic response to Covid-19 such as the implementation of additional nation-wide schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna (PMGKAY) and AtmaNirbhar Bharat Scheme (ANBS).
The government has made the allocation of food grains at the rate of Rs 5 kg per person per month free of cost for around 80 crore (800 million) beneficiaries of the 36 states/UTs for the period April to November 2O2O and again for the period May to November 2021.
In addition to food grains, pulses have been provided one kg per household per month for the period April to November 2020 free of cost to all beneficiaries under NFSA covering 19.4 crore (194 million) households.