New Delhi, Oct 15: Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of the Global Hunger Index, said India, a day after it was ranked 107 on the index, behind neighbours Bangladesh, Pakistan and crisis-hit Sri Lanka.
“A consistent effort is yet again visible to taint India’s image as a nation that does not fulfill the food security and nutritional requirements of its population. Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of the annually released Global Hunger Index,” India said in a statement.
“The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. Three out of the four indicators are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population,” the statement read.
India also noted that the fourth and most important indicator estimate of Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000.
“The report is not only disconnected from ground reality, but also chooses to deliberately ignore efforts made by the government to ensure food security for the population, especially during the Covid Pandemic,” it said.
India said that calculating hunger based on mainly indicators relating to health indicators of children is neither scientific nor rational.
The Global Hunger Index is a tool that measures and tracks hunger globally as well as by region and by country. India was ranked 101st in the 2021 rankings.
