India improves in Global Hunger Index in 2005-14, inter-state differences remain

By Rajiv Shah
A new report, “2015 Global Hunger Index” has ranked India No 80th of 117 countries selected for calculating global hunger index (GHI). While this is better than Pakistan (No 93), this is no consolation, as it India’s ranking has been found to be lower than the other important neighbouring countries – China (No 21), Nepal (No 58), Sril Lanka (No 69), and Bangladesh (No 73).
Prepared by three western institutes, Concern Worldwide, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Welthungerhilfe, the report maps global hunger levels and identifies the improvements or the deterioration of food security in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, even as pointing out that there is a “complex relationship between hunger and conflict.”

Pointing out that GHI is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally, regionally, and by country, the report has looked into four major issues while calculating GHI:
· the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the population (reflecting the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake);
· the proportion of children under the age of five who suffer from wasting (that is, low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition);
· the proportion of children under the age of five who suffer from stunting (that is, low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition); and
· the mortality rate of children under the age of five (partially reflecting the fatal synergy of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments).

The report states, “South Asia’s GHI score declined at a moderate rate between 1990 and 2000, but then progress stalled between 2000 and 2005 before hunger levels dropped again between 2005 and 2015. This closely follows the trend of GHI scores for India, where nearly three-quarters of South Asia’s population lives.” Basing its calculations of the basis of the data available till 2014, when the UPA government was thrown out of power, the report states, “The decrease of more than 8 points in South Asia’s GHI score since 2005 may be largely attributed to recent successes in the fight against child undernutrition in India.”
The report underlines, “According to the most recent data from India, wasting in children fell from 20 percent to 15 percent between 2005–2006 and 2013–2014, and stunting fell from 48 percent to 39 percent in the same period.”

The report further says that all this was mainly due to “programmes and initiatives launched by India’s central and state governments in the past decade”, which, it adds, “seem to have made a difference for child nutrition.”

“The Government of India scaled up nutrition-specific interventions over the past decade”, the report says, adding, one of the interventions was “a final drive to expand the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme that aims to improve the health, nutrition, and development of children in India.”
The second major intervention, it says, was “the creation of the National Rural Health Mission (NHRM), a community-based health initiative designed to deliver essential health services to rural India.”
But the report complains, “Progress in reducing child undernutrition has been uneven across India’s states. While the reasons for the improvements—or lack thereof — are not entirely clear, one factor that seems to correlate with undernutrition in India is open defecation, which contributes to illnesses that prevent the absorption of nutrients.”
“Additionally”, it adds, “the low social status of women, which affects women’s health and nutrition, makes it more likely that babies will be born underweight.”

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

Jayanthi Natarajan "never stood by tribals' rights" in MNC Vedanta's move to mine Niyamigiri Hills in Odisha

By A Representative The Odisha Chapter of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which played a vital role in the struggle for the enactment of historic Forest Rights Act, 2006 has blamed former Union environment minister Jaynaynthi Natarjan for failing to play any vital role to defend the tribals' rights in the forest areas during her tenure under the former UPA government. Countering her recent statement that she rejected environmental clearance to Vendanta, the top UK-based NMC, despite tremendous pressure from her colleagues in Cabinet and huge criticism from industry, and the claim that her decision was “upheld by the Supreme Court”, the CSD said this is simply not true, and actually she "disrespected" FRA.

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra* The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Search This Blog