Each year, five organisations—the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the World Food Programme—join hands to publish a report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world. This report that comes close on the heels of the Index Report 2023 draws on survey data supplied by countries as well as surveys conducted using robust methodologies. In normal course, no country disputes its findings, or the methodology, save for the Indian government, which has, for the last 10 years, not supplied data on the prevalence of undernutrition or the number of undernourished to the global bodies.
The overall global picture on food security and nutrition in low and middle income groups is not flattering. India is no exception. Yet, no government disputes the data as much as India does. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, not once, but disputed twice the low ranking of India on the Global Hunger Index (GHI). The GHI, which is compiled every year with the help of surveys and information sourced from multilateral organisations, had ranked India poorly last October, even below some of its South Asian neighbors. In 2023, India was ranked 111th out of 125 countries, below Pakistan and Sudan. When members of the Opposition, quoting India’s ranking in the GHI and raised a reference to poverty and hunger in the recently concluded monsoon session, Sitharaman strongly rebutted the findings in both Houses.
While replying to the debate on the Budget, she said the GHI was not a balanced approach to measure hunger. She questioned its reliability and described it as a ‘flawed indicator’. Cautioning members that there was an attempt to derail the government’s ‘Viksit Bharat’ agenda, she suggested members to be ‘conscious of it,’. Sitharaman was merely echoing her government’s stated position on the GHI, a position that has remained unchanged over the last few years.
In fact, the government’s disputing of data and methodology was commented upon by others as well. In an article in the Asia section of its print edition (August 8) The Economist, commenting on the Lok Sabha results of June, noted how ‘denial’ was the ‘first and often, the only response of India’s government to bad news’. The government’s response to bad news, it further noted, was to stick its fingers in its ears. The ‘bad news’ in the article referred to the exam paper leaks; the rebuttal by the government of figures of jobs generated and cited by Citicorp bank; the WHO’s estimates of excess COVID-19 deaths in India; the GHI ranking, environmental ranking of India and a host of other reports including the World Bank’s human capital index, all of which had not portrayed a flattering image of the government. These were instances when the government had serious issues with the ‘methodology.’
There is little doubt that when the GHI 2024 report emerges in a few months, the reactions of the government are going to be very much the same: one of denial. The GHI draws heavily on data from the State of Food Security and Nutrition report while ranking nations. The government has consistently rubbished the GHI’s rankings but this time it may be difficult. The reason being the FAO’s Statistics Division had gained access to full microdata sets of 14 surveys from 13 countries including India. Two data sets on food consumption, 2011-12 and 2022-23 from India were used for the report.
The FAO’s latest estimates for Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) or Hunger show a marginal decline in hunger in India from last year, says an economist familiar with the methodological tools and data sets used to determine PoU and hunger levels. However, the levels of hunger remain much higher than the pre-COVID-19 levels.
Every year in July, when FAO releases new estimates of hunger, it also updates some of the earlier estimates based on new data that become available. FAO’s statistical database, FAOSTAT, provides a comparable series of estimates of PoU. These numbers show that although there has been a marginal decline from 14 per cent in 2020-22, which was the period of the pandemic, to 13.7 per cent in 2021-23, the level in 2021-23 remains much higher than the pre-pandemic levels. In fact, the proportion of population facing chronic hunger was only 10.3 per cent in 2014-16. So, the level of hunger in 2021-23, although slightly lower than the level during the COVID-19 period, is still much higher than in 2014-16. The number of people suffering from chronic hunger increased by 5 crore between 2014-16 and 2021-23.
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These figures are particularly important because, over the last few years, the government has been critical of the FAO for estimating numbers for India using unofficial surveys. This was done because official surveys of consumption were not conducted by the government. India did, however, recently release estimates from the latest Consumption Expenditure Survey (for 2022-23), and it is reasonable to assume that this was taken into account by FAO in estimating the numbers this time around. Given this, the numbers presented this year become all the more important.
Over the last 10 years or so, FAO has also been releasing data on proportion of population suffering from moderate or severe food insecurity. According to informed sources, the government does not permit the FAO to publish these numbers for India in the report. Among South Asian countries, India was the only one which was marked ‘n.r’ (not reported) in two categories. It did not report the prevalence of moderate and severe food insecurity among its population (for the period 2014-16 and 2021-23). Bhutan was the other country where data on these parameters was not applicable because of the very low prevalence of undernourishment (less than 2.5 per cent); otherwise, every country in South Asia had reported figures to the FAO on the prevalence and absolute numbers of moderate and severely food insecure people.
Nearly 55.6 per cent of the population in India were unable to afford a healthy diet, and in absolute numbers this was 788.2 million, the highest in Asia. India, is among the countries listed by the FAO that make a high contribution to the number of undernourished in the world. India was among 10 countries (Benin, Uganda, Mexico, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, Georgia and Brazil) where public spending on food and nutrition per capita was among the lowest in the world.
However, estimates for India can be deduced from numbers published in the report by subtracting numbers for “South Asia excluding India” from numbers for “South Asia”. These numbers show that the proportion of population suffering from moderate or severe food insecurity has remained stagnant at 24.8 per cent since the pandemic struck, and is significantly higher than the 18.9 per cent in 2014.
Nearly 55.6 per cent of the population in India were unable to afford a healthy diet. | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat
Financing for nutrition and hunger is one of the key messages in the report but that is not all. It calls upon donors and international agencies to increase their risk tolerance, but more importantly, it calls on governments to fill the gaps unaddressed by private commercial actors by investing in public goods, reducing corruption, tax evasion and increasing food security and nutrition expenditure and re-purposing policy support. All the major drivers of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition—conflict, climate change, economic slowdowns, un-affordability of healthy diets, high and persistent inequality—had not only increased in frequency but were occurring concurrently as well. The report says that countries were confronted with the “double burden” of malnutrition, which was defined by the co-existence of undernutrition with overweight and obesity.
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A ‘nutrition transition’ had taken place; a shift from basic dietary requirements to greater dietary diversity which also included consumption of processed foods. The trend towards processed foods was associated more with globalisation, rapid urbanisation and sedentary lifestyles. All in all, an epidemiological transition was taking place.
The authors concede that while some improvements have been noticed in the more populous countries, hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity continue to increase in many parts of the world. Rural areas tend to be worse off compared to urban ones. The report examines why policies and investments have not been implemented at scale. It recognises that policies and legislation to end hunger need to be backed by resources. More countries were off track than on track for most of the global nutrition targets and one key issue was financing for hunger and nutrition.
National governments, says the report, can mobilize domestic tax revenues, increase priority sector expenditure on food security and nutrition. Measuring finances for food security and nutrition was another challenge. One additional issue was that the ending of hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition were unnecessarily in competition with other development objectives.
The recommendations of such reports can be questioned, and rightly so, with each country deciding what to pick up and what to discard. But in the short term, questioning the methodology and intent of UN bodies might suit domestic politics and optics but ultimately end up obfuscating objective realities on ground.
