In a blistering statement, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD) came down heavy on the publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report saying that the report was devoid of ground reality and facts raising concerns over the methodology to ascertain the rankings.
“It is shocking to find that the Global Hunger Report 2021 has lowered the rank of India on the basis of FAO estimate on proportion of undernourished population, which is found to be devoid of ground reality and facts and suffers from serious methodological issues. “, the Ministry said.
“The publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, have not done their due diligence before releasing the report. The methodology used by FAO is unscientific. They have based their assessment on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which was conducted telephonically by Gallup.” the statement further added.
The scientific measurement of undernourishment would require measurement of weight and Height, whereas the methodology involved here is based on Gallup poll based on pure telephonic estimate of the population.
“The report completely disregards Government’s massive effort to ensure food security of the entire population during the covid period, verifiable data on which are available.” the Ministry said.
The Ministry pointed out that the opinion poll does not have a single question on whether the respondents received any food support from the Government or other sources raising doubts over the representativeness of the data.
“It is noted with surprise, from the FAO report ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021’, that other four countries of this region – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, have not been affected at all by Covid-19 pandemic induced loss of job/business and reduction in income levels, rather they have been able to improve their position on the indicator ‘proportion of undernourished population’ by 4.3%, 3.3%, 1.3% and 0.8% points respectively during the period 2018-20 over 2017-19.”, the Ministry pointed out.
The statement also issued a number of initiatives taken by the government to ensure food security to its citizens.
It must be noted that India undertook the largest food security drive during the pandemic when the Modi government provided free food rations across India to all families.
(With inputs from PIB)
Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.