This year’s Global Hunger Index, a peer-reviewed annual report that tracks hunger at the “global, regional, and country levels," has shown South Asia, and India in particular, as a hunger hot spot. India has been ranked 107th out of the 121 countries that were the subject of the report. India, whose child-wasting rate of 19.3% was the highest of any country, was ranked below countries such as Pakistan, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Sudan. In the Global Hunger Index 2021, India had been ranked 101st out of 116 countries.
The government of India, for the second year in a row, has rejected the report. It has claimed that the report’s methodology is flawed, and that it ignores the food security efforts of the central government during the pandemic. How was this report prepared? Are the criticisms of it justified? What are its implications for food security and public policy?