India ranks at 102nd place in Global Hunger Index 2019

Oct 17, 2019

Authors: Ms. Kritika Bhasin, Research Officer at PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Dr. S P Sharma, Chief Economist at PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and Ms Megha Kaul, Economist at PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

India has been ranked at 102nd place among 117 economies in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2019. According to the Global Hunger Index: The Challenge of Hunger and Climate Change, while the world has made gradual progress in reducing hunger on a global scale since 2000, this progress has been uneven. Hunger persists in many countries and in some instances progress is even being reversed.

With a 2019 GHI score of 20.0, the level of hunger and under-nutrition worldwide is on the cusp of the moderate and serious categories. This score reflects a decline of 31% since 2000, when the global GHI score was 29.0 and fell into the serious category. Underlying this improvement are reductions in each of the four GHI indicators—the rates of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality—since 2000.

At the regional level, South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara have the highest 2019 GHI scores in the world, at 29.3 and 28.4, respectively. These scores indicate serious levels of hunger according to the GHI Severity Scale. In contrast, the 2019 GHI scores of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Latin America and the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia, and the Near East and North Africa range from 6.6 to 13.3, indicating low or moderate hunger levels

India ranked at 102nd  place in 2019 as compared to 103rd place in 2018 and 100th position in 2017. According to the report, India’s child wasting rate is extremely high at 20.8%. The country’s child stunting rate, 37.9%, is also categorized as very high in terms of its public health significance. In India, just 9.6% of all children between 6 and 23 months of age are fed a minimum acceptable diet. As of 2015–2016, 90% of Indian households used an improved drinking water source while 39% of households had no sanitation facilities.

Source: PHD Research Bureau, PHDCCI compiled from Global Hunger Index report 2019.

Note: ¹ Ranked according to 2019 GHI scores. Countries that have identical 2019 scores are given the same ranking (for example, Mexico and Tunisia are both ranked 23rd). The following countries could not be included because of lack of data: Bahrain, Bhutan, Burundi, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Moldova, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Somalia, South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Tajikistan.

² The 17 countries with 2019 GHI scores of less than 5 are not assigned individual ranks, but rather are collectively ranked 1–17. Differences between their scores are minimal.