The government criticized the Global Hunger Index report, which placed India at 107th place

New Delhi: The center on Saturday said misinformation appeared to be the hallmark of the annually published Global Hunger Index. The Global Hunger Report 2022, published by Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, NGOs from Ireland and Germany respectively, ranked India 107th out of 121 countries.

“The index is a flawed measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological problems. Three of the four indicators used to calculate the index are related to children’s health and may not be representative of the entire population. The fourth and most important estimate of the ratio of undernourished population (PoU) is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample of 3,000,” the Ministry of Women and Child Development said in a statement.

The ministry said the report is not only out of touch with the ground reality but also chooses to deliberately ignore the efforts made by the government to ensure food security for the population especially during the Covid pandemic.

“Looked at one-dimensionally, the report downgrades India based on the proportion of undernourished population (PoU) estimate for India at 16.3 percent. FAO’s assessment is based on the Food Insecurity Scale (FIES) survey module conducted through the Gallop World Poll, which is an “8-question public opinion survey” with a sample size of “3,000 respondents “.

Data collected from a miniscule sample for a country the size of India through FIES was used to calculate the PoU value for India, which is not only wrong and unethical but also reeks of obvious bias.

The Global Hunger Report’s publishing agencies, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, apparently did not do their due diligence before publishing the report, the statement said.

The ministry said the matter has been taken up with FAO not to use such marks based on the July 2022 FIES survey module data as the statistical result of the same will not be based on merit.

While there is an assurance that there will be further engagement on this issue, the publication of the Global Hunger Index report regardless of such factual considerations is regrettable, it added.

(IANS)