Still, out of curiosity, I did something that people don’t really like to do these days – dig through the actual reports, study the methodology, look at the data sources and horror of horrors, read! Who does all that these days? Just comment on the headline, move on!
However, is important to put on record and show that the GHI report has serious flaws, perhaps even unintentional (This would be true even if India was ranked at the top and has nothing to do with my own nationality). Misinformation from even reputed sources like this can tarnish a country’s image and de-motivate government employees who work hard to solve India’s nutrition issues.
The GHI report is jointly released by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, non-government organizations from Ireland and Germany respectively. Both are good, reputed organizations with long track records. It will be disingenuous and incorrect to ascribe malafide intentionality to their actions.
The actual report is a 60-page beautiful pdf document, with its heart in the right place. The formatting and language are perfect. It has beautiful pictures, such as of African farmwomen holding vegetables (sometimes I wonder if they give a brief – get us photos of poor, happy people to put in such reports). It’s the kind of report India’s woke, elite and beautiful set will absolutely love. Which also means it would be blasphemy to question it (with obvious labeling of being a Modi-RSS-bhakt, of course. I take that risk).
However, the report and its rankings are highly questionable. Four criteria are used to determine the final index – Prevalence of undernourishment, Child stunting rate, Child wasting rate and Child mortality. Different standardizations and weightages are applied to each criterion, which can be questioned, but let’s live with it for now. Three of the four criteria are related to children. Child stunting rate is defined as the percentage of children that are two standard deviations below the reference height for a 5-year-old. Child wasting rate is defined as the percentage of children that are two standard deviations below the reference weight for a 5-year-old. The argument being if our children are not tall enough or weigh enough, it is an indicator of national hunger. It is in these parameters that India’s scored poorly, and hence the slippage in rank. The GHI report takes India’s data from our own National Family Health Survey 2019-2021 (NHS-5). The NHS is prepared by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, by surveying a sizable sample of over 6 lakh households. In this 700-plus page report, there is data for India’s Child stunting and Child wasting rates. It says 36% percent of Indian kids are stunted (or their height is 2-standard deviations lower than what it should be) and 19% of the children are wasted (or weigh 2-standard deviations less than reference). These are some of the highest values in the world. Plug these into the GHI criteria spreadsheet, and voila, India ranks low, even behind North Korea. We are a starving nation!
The GHI creators may counter they are only using the data given by India’s Ministry of Health. Hence, one also needs to examine the NHS-5 report. The idea that 36%, or over one-thirds of Indian kids are stunted made little sense. The reason for this massive number? The reference heights used by our NHS. They use WHO data, who provide charts on how tall a child should be at age 5. They also provide the 2-standard deviation cut-off point (which in normal distributions should be only around 3% of the children). So, the WHO prescribes that the median height for a 5-year-old boy should be 110.3cm. The 2-standard deviation point is 101.6cm, below which height he is stunted. Hence, there is a global standard we must meet, our ethnicity, race and genetics don’t matter. Hence, in a country where almost everyone has a cellphone, 36% of our children are stunted!
Many research papers have found flaws with WHO reference height and weight charts. For instance, studies have compared height of affluent Indians kids. Surely, they get enough to eat. However, you will still find a high percentage of ‘stunted’ Indian affluent kids. Should we still use WHO reference heights?
For if 35% of our kids are stunted, does that mean 35% of grown Indian adults are also stunted? If they are not, what happens? How do our stunted kids magically grow after age 5? If we are a starving nation, there should be hunger throughout, right?
This is a serious issue. Well-intentioned attempts are made to make such indices, set some criteria and create some reference tables – but they are all done with a Western, developed country lens. They are free to do whatever data-crunching they want, but to use words like ‘Hunger,’ claim to create a Global ‘Hunger’ Index and showing us to be a land of hunger-stricken people is plain wrong. Please do whatever data analysis you want, but then call it the WJFLI Index, or We-just-felt-like-it Index. No problem at all.
The Indian government’s response is valid in questioning these results. Sure, we have problems of malnutrition, but the situation is much better than decades ago, and it certainly isn’t where this whatever index suggests.
At the same time, the Indian government should also examine its own publications that show that 35% of Indian kids are stunted. We need to question the WHO criteria for reference heights or find alternative measures. Maybe compare the average Indian child’s height and weight with an affluent cohort, like top Indian city school kids.
Meanwhile, creators of the GHI report should realize – doing a report on hunger is great, but there should also be a hunger for doing a report that makes sense.