 The Global Hunger Index has ranked India 101st out of 116 countries, below our neighbours like Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Last year, the GHI had ranked India 94 out of 107 countries. However, to say that India's rank has fallen by 7 places would not entirely be accurate, since the number of countries was lesser last year. Therefore, it is not wise to focus on the ranking at all. The bottom line is, India was ranked terribly low last year and it has been ranked terribly low this year. October 16 is celebrated as World Food Day across the globe every year. The report was published on October 14 this year, prepared by publishing agencies Concerned Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfer. Countries are ranked based on four indicators – undernourishment of the entire population, child wasting, child stunting and child mortality. Data for the indicators comes from data collection efforts by various UN and other multilateral agencies. These are India's scores on the indicators this year. The Ministry of Women and Child Development made an official press release with regards to the report on October 15. Quite conveniently talking only about the proportion of undernourished population, which is just one of the four indicators in the index, the government rubbish the report. This particular indicator has been estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, FAO. In its statement, the ministry said, it is shocking to find that the global hunger report has lowered the rank of India on the basis of FAO estimate on proportion of undernourished population, which is devoid of ground reality and facts and suffers from serious methodological issues. Right-to-food campaign activist Professor Deepa Sinha told the quint that the FAO methodology can be criticised for underestimating but not overestimating the figures. News click talked to her to get more clarity on the issue. The point is not whether the rank went down or up, but the point is that since the time the global hunger report started coming out in 2006, every year India is in the bottom 10% of the list of countries that are included, which shows very clearly that hunger and hunger is defined broadly to mean undernourishment and food insecurity is a serious concern in India, particularly also because the number of countries that rank above India are economically poorer. They have lower per capita incomes and a higher proportion of poverty. This year it's become even more of a controversy because the government of India has come up with an official response to the report saying that it is based on an unscientific methodology. Their contention is that this is based on a phone survey asking people on the situation of food insecurity, but that is not true. The report very clearly states the methodology and the sources of data. There are four indicators that go into the index, two of them are to do with childhood malnutrition, so stunting and wasting, child mortality, and the fourth is proportion of undernourished population. So it's the proportion of undernourished population that has gone up compared to the previous year for which they provide comparable data, which is 2012. That comes from the FAO and that is based on a modelling exercise that the FAO does using official data sources on food availability and consumption, and something FAO has been doing for a long time. Looking at it in a broader perspective, this is kind of a pattern that we've been seeing here where the government continuously denies reports of rural distress, of hunger and so on, where for instance even our own national data like the consumption expenditure survey is not released saying that the methodology is flawed. So every time inconvenient data comes up from whatever source, the government rejects that data saying that the data quality is poor, but it's also not putting out any kind of alternate rigorous data telling us what the situation is. Here is some older data to ponder over. According to a 2020 estimate by FAO, India had at least 189 million, nearly 19 crore people who were suffering from serious hunger. That's about 14% of the population going hungry on a continuing basis. There are so many other data sources which are showing that India's fight against hunger and malnutrition has for a very long time been not great and in the recent periods we seem to be going back on even the successes that we meet. So for instance between 2005, 6 and 15, 16 if you look at the NFHS data there was a 10 percentage point decline in stunting. Now we have the National Family Health Survey partial data for 22 states which was done in 2019 and the survey couldn't be completed because of COVID. If you look at the data for those states you see that in most of the states either stunting has gone up or it's stagnated and wasting has gone up, anemia has increased. So clearly in this period between 2015 to 21 something has gone wrong where you see that malnutrition indicators which indicate overall well-being in many ways are worse. During the pandemic a New York Times report had called out the Narendra Modi government for the grave mismanagement of this crisis. In a formal response the government called the report a provocative and attention-seeking peace that comes at a time when the country is doing well in tackling the pandemic. Let's find out what our government did specifically to tackle hunger during the pandemic. Further issue of concern which again when you look at the Government of India's response to the report is that they've listed out a number of things that they have done in response to COVID. It's true that government did a number of things like they have listed but that has been really inadequate in comparison to the scale of the problem. So if there's so many people whose lost jobs or whose incomes have gone down just giving that 5 kgs extra for free for six months in 2020 and again six months in 2021 for those who already have PDS ration cards has just not been sufficient for families to maintain their consumption levels which were already insufficient and low. Based on ground reports and a number of independent surveys that have been carried out by academics and civil society organizations we know that post COVID the situation of hunger and food insecurity has worsened. So we have many other indicators which tell us economic growth has slowed down that the situation of hunger could be worse that there is a cause for concern but it's unfortunate that the government's response has been one of denial and denial therefore also means that all the additional measures that need to be taken to address the situation are not being done at all. Okay now we know that the people did go hungry during the pandemic but why? Did the government not have enough food to feed its people? The contradiction of this hunger situation in India is that at the same time as we see this increasing food insecurity we also have the highest levels of food grain stocks in the public warehouses in our country. This is grain that the government buys from farmers it's mainly rice and wheat and we have about 100 million tonnes now. What this basically shows is the complete mismanagement of the food economy where the procurement is happening but distribution to those who require these grains is something where we see a gap and this is again largely taking place because the government wants to contain its subsidy and therefore restricting its additional benefits even during COVID times to only those who are already under the beneficiary lists and the large population especially migrants, homeless populations, the old people belonging to tribal communities have been left out of these lists because of various reasons and they have not yet been included by expanding the net. So we have this very unethical situation where on the one hand we have grains in fact rotting out in the open because we don't have the space to store all of it and on the other hand we have a lot of people who are actually going hungry and not even getting their basic three meals. Wait if the government greeneries were full to the brim why would it let its people starve? So basically the way this whole food subsidy works is that the government buys grain from the farmers that doesn't get counted as subsidy because you're paying money and you're buying something. That comes in the FCI's account books as FCI liabilities. When the government then resells it at a lower price it's the difference in the price that comes up as the fiscal deficit. So as long as they're keeping it in the stocks it is not coming into the government budget books. So when they have some four percent whatever cut off they keep for their fiscal deficit they can keep that going as long as they're not distributing this grain. The minute they put the grain out then in the accounting it reflects as a deficit and then fiscal deficit goes up then all these ratings will fall and the markets will get affected and so on. So it's basically an accounting I mean in real terms it's nothing it is an accounting thing. It comes from one book to the other when you distribute the grain. So as long as it's FCI losses all these rating credit rating and whatever the market rating type agencies are not bothered. Once it comes as your fiscal deficit then the all of those start getting affected. What we understand from this is that the government can feed its people but it's simply unwilling to do so. Is it more interested in protecting its image by keeping the fiscal deficit below a certain level even if that comes at a cost of the well-being of its own people?