Sir,

According to the data of Global Hunger Index (GHI), India seems to have severe levels of widespread hunger as it ranked 97 among 118 developing countries. Some of the countries whose condition is even worse than India include extremely poor African countries such as Niger, Chad, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan also come in the list and all ranked above India.

There are few key parameters that are taken into account while calculating GHI: shares of undernourished population, wasted and stunted children aged fewer than 5 and infant mortality rate.

Although India runs two of the world’s biggest children nutrition programmes, still malnutrition continues to haunt India. Poverty, unemployment, lack of sanitation and many more similar factors are the reasons behind sorry state. In 2000, India was ranked 83 and 102 in 2008 with GHI scores of 38.2 and 36 respectively. Hence India’s ranking is worse today than it was before 15 years ago. As compared to India, Bangladesh was ranked 84 with score of 38.5 in 2000. But in 2016 it has improved beyond India.

Yours Truly,

Aparna Singh

3rd year Communicative English with Media studies, Patna Women’s College

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