BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today
The Global Hunger Index report, released last week, came as a shock to India as it indicated a steep fall in its rank during the past three years.
The GHI rank had improved continuously under the Manmohan Singh government. From 67 in 2011 it moved up to 66 in 2012, to 63 in 2013 and to 55 in 2014, the year Narendra Modi came to power. Then it fell –to 80 in 2015, to 97 in 2016 and to 100 this year.
GHI is a multidimensional statistical tool developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington, and has been in use since 2006 to measure the extent of progress in the fight against hunger.
The IFPRI figures led to a storm of criticism in the social media against the Modi administration. The government’s supporters questioned the claim that there had been a steep fall in India’s rank.
Pratik Sinha of Alt News, which specialises in fact-checking of media reports, found substance in their arguments. Until a few years ago, IFPRI had prepared the global chart after dropping from the list countries whose GHI was less than five. When these countries are also included, India’s rank during the last six years was as follows: 2012 – 106 out of 120; 2013 – 105 out of 120; 2014 – 99 out of 120; 2015 – 93 out of 117; 2016 – 97 out of 118; and 2017 – 100 out of 119.
While these figures dispel the impression of a huge setback in the fight against hunger, they confirm that there has been a reversal in the trend since Modi came to power, promising the people achche din (good days).
What’s more, India’s GHI rank is worse than that of North Korea (93) and Iraq (78). Its GHI score of 31.4 puts it at the top of the countries with a “serious” hunger situation.
India’s poor record has made South Asia, where all countries with the exception of Pakistan (106) rank higher than it, the worst performing region.
Ironically, India, which is the world’s second largest producer of food, also has the world’s second highest undernourished population. “A high GDP growth rate alone is no guarantee of food and nutrition security for India’s vast majority,” Nivedita Varshneya, a co-author of the GHI report said.
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s 2017 report also showed India in a poor light. It said 1.45 billion people in the 103 countries it surveyed are multidimensionally poor, and of them 689 million (48 per cent) are children. India accounted for 31 per cent of these children.
The reason why India, which was making slow gains in the fight against hunger, started losing two years ago is easy to explain. For a long time, spending on health has hovered around one per cent of the GDP. In its 2014 election manifesto, the BJP promised to raise spending to three per cent. But allocation for health shrank under the Modi regime.
In 2015, in his first full budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reduced the Health Ministry’s allocation by about Rs 59 billion. Spending on public health was cut by eight per cent and the outlay on the National Health Mission slashed by 20 per cent.
The following year the Economic Survey called for increased investment on child nutrition programmes in order to capitalise on the demographic advantage offered by the young population. Yet in the 2016 budget Jaitley cut the provision for child health intervention from Rs 154.8 billion to Rs 140 billion. The allocation for the mid-day meal scheme for school children was also reduced.
Jaitley has defended the lower allocations on health and education, saying the states lack the capacity to spend and the funds provided in the past were not fully utilised.
Some states have found money from their own revenues to make up for the shortfall in Central allocations. This is not an option open to the poor states.
In March, the government placed before Parliament a national health policy, which Health Minister JP Nadda described as a milestone. It sets 2025 as target date for increasing state expenditure on health to 2.5 per cent of the GDP and reducing the number of households facing “catastrophic health expenditure” which now stands at 25 per cent.
Raising nutrition level does not figure among the priority areas identified in the policy document. This betrays lack of appreciation of the role of a healthy citizenry in achieving the nation’s development goals. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, October 17, 2017.
Gulf Today
The Global Hunger Index report, released last week, came as a shock to India as it indicated a steep fall in its rank during the past three years.
The GHI rank had improved continuously under the Manmohan Singh government. From 67 in 2011 it moved up to 66 in 2012, to 63 in 2013 and to 55 in 2014, the year Narendra Modi came to power. Then it fell –to 80 in 2015, to 97 in 2016 and to 100 this year.
GHI is a multidimensional statistical tool developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington, and has been in use since 2006 to measure the extent of progress in the fight against hunger.
The IFPRI figures led to a storm of criticism in the social media against the Modi administration. The government’s supporters questioned the claim that there had been a steep fall in India’s rank.
Pratik Sinha of Alt News, which specialises in fact-checking of media reports, found substance in their arguments. Until a few years ago, IFPRI had prepared the global chart after dropping from the list countries whose GHI was less than five. When these countries are also included, India’s rank during the last six years was as follows: 2012 – 106 out of 120; 2013 – 105 out of 120; 2014 – 99 out of 120; 2015 – 93 out of 117; 2016 – 97 out of 118; and 2017 – 100 out of 119.
While these figures dispel the impression of a huge setback in the fight against hunger, they confirm that there has been a reversal in the trend since Modi came to power, promising the people achche din (good days).
What’s more, India’s GHI rank is worse than that of North Korea (93) and Iraq (78). Its GHI score of 31.4 puts it at the top of the countries with a “serious” hunger situation.
India’s poor record has made South Asia, where all countries with the exception of Pakistan (106) rank higher than it, the worst performing region.
Ironically, India, which is the world’s second largest producer of food, also has the world’s second highest undernourished population. “A high GDP growth rate alone is no guarantee of food and nutrition security for India’s vast majority,” Nivedita Varshneya, a co-author of the GHI report said.
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s 2017 report also showed India in a poor light. It said 1.45 billion people in the 103 countries it surveyed are multidimensionally poor, and of them 689 million (48 per cent) are children. India accounted for 31 per cent of these children.
The reason why India, which was making slow gains in the fight against hunger, started losing two years ago is easy to explain. For a long time, spending on health has hovered around one per cent of the GDP. In its 2014 election manifesto, the BJP promised to raise spending to three per cent. But allocation for health shrank under the Modi regime.
In 2015, in his first full budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reduced the Health Ministry’s allocation by about Rs 59 billion. Spending on public health was cut by eight per cent and the outlay on the National Health Mission slashed by 20 per cent.
The following year the Economic Survey called for increased investment on child nutrition programmes in order to capitalise on the demographic advantage offered by the young population. Yet in the 2016 budget Jaitley cut the provision for child health intervention from Rs 154.8 billion to Rs 140 billion. The allocation for the mid-day meal scheme for school children was also reduced.
Jaitley has defended the lower allocations on health and education, saying the states lack the capacity to spend and the funds provided in the past were not fully utilised.
Some states have found money from their own revenues to make up for the shortfall in Central allocations. This is not an option open to the poor states.
In March, the government placed before Parliament a national health policy, which Health Minister JP Nadda described as a milestone. It sets 2025 as target date for increasing state expenditure on health to 2.5 per cent of the GDP and reducing the number of households facing “catastrophic health expenditure” which now stands at 25 per cent.
Raising nutrition level does not figure among the priority areas identified in the policy document. This betrays lack of appreciation of the role of a healthy citizenry in achieving the nation’s development goals. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, October 17, 2017.
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