India

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a peer-reviewed report, published on an annual basis by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. The GHI is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, reflecting multiple dimensions of hunger over time. The report aims to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger, provide a way to compare levels of hunger between countries and regions, and call attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where the need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger is greatest.

Each country’s GHI score is calculated based on a formula that combines four indicators that together capture the multidimensional nature of hunger:

• Undernourishment: the share of the population whose caloric intake is insufficient;
• Child stunting: the share of children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition;
• Child wasting: the share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition; and
• Child mortality: the share of children who die before their fifth birthday, reflecting in part the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.

For more information visit the GHI methodology webpage.

India’s 2023 GHI score is 28.7, considered serious according to the GHI Severity of Hunger Scale. This is a slight improvement from its 2015 GHI score of 29.2, also considered serious, and shows considerable improvement relative to its 2000 and 2008 GHI scores of 38.4 and 35.5, respectively, both considered alarming. India is ranked 111^th out of 125 countries included in the ranking in the 2023 GHI report. India's child wasting rate, at 18.7 percent, is the highest child wasting rate in the report; its child stunting rate is 35.5 percent; its prevalence of undernourishment is 16.6 percent; and its under-five mortality rate is 3.1 percent.

The 2023 GHI report provides comparisons between countries for 2000, 2008, 2015, and 2023 GHI scores and indicator values. It is not valid, however, to compare the data and ranking published in the 2023 GHI report with the data and ranking published in the 2022 GHI report, or any other past reports. This is because each year, the data are revised, the set of countries included in the ranking changes, and the methodology may also be revised (see Appendix A of the 2023 GHI or the explanation of the methodology on our website). Consequently, given the nature of the data underlying the calculation of GHI scores, the 2000, 2008, 2015, and 2023 GHI scores and indicator values published in the 2023 GHI report are the only historical data that can currently be used for valid comparisons over time.

The following values for the GHI component indicators were used to calculate India’s 2023 GHI score: The prevalence of undernourishment value is 16.6 percent, as reported in the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. The child mortality value is 3.1 percent, as reported in the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation’s (UN IGME) latest report, published in January 2023. The child stunting value is 35.5 percent, and the child wasting value is 18.7 percent; these are the values from India’s National Family Health Survey (2019–2021) (NFHS-5) as reported in the Joint Malnutrition Estimates Joint Data Set Including Survey Estimates (2023 edition).

In the compilation of the stunting and wasting values, we prioritize and use survey estimates that have been vetted for inclusion in the Joint Malnutrition Estimates and/or the WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition, wherever possible. The GHI uses the same data sources for all countries to calculate the respective country scores. This ensures that all the rates used have been produced using comparable methodologies. Introducing exceptions to this process for any country or countries would compromise the comparability of the results and the ranking.

India has demonstrated significant political will to transform the food and nutrition landscape. Some examples are the National Food Security Act, Poshan Abhiyan (National Nutrition Mission), PM Garib Kalyan Yojna and National Mission for Natural Farming. However, there is still room for improvement. India would likely see the greatest improvements in its GHI scores and ranking, as well as in the on-the-ground well-being of its children, by addressing its high rates of child wasting and child stunting. India’s child wasting rate, at 18.7 percent, is the highest of any country in the report, and its child stunting rate, at 35.5 percent, is the 15th-highest in the report. Of course, a decrease in India’s GHI score does not guarantee an improvement in its ranking if other countries reduce their GHI scores by equal or greater amounts. For India to improve in the ranking, it would need to improve more than other countries in the report. It is important to remember that the rankings in GHI reports cannot be validly compared from year to year (see #4).

To compare India with its neighboring countries individually, please see Appendix B and Appendix C or the respective country pages on the GHI website to see how the GHI scores and indicator values (prevalence of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality) of these countries compare with those of India.

Over the long term, GHI scores can reflect underlying conditions such as inequality, poverty, governance, and demographic conditions, as well as shocks and crises such as economic downturns, climate extremes and conflict. The effects of crises on the indicators used in the calculation of GHI scores can vary from country to country. Depending on the preexisting vulnerability of the population and a country’s social protection measures, an economic crisis may or may not manifest as increases in the prevalence of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and/or child mortality, affecting the extent to which the crisis results in changes in GHI scores.

To capture the complex problem of hunger, the GHI report reflects the consequences of deficiencies in calories as well as deficiencies in micronutrients (known as “hidden hunger”). According to the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, hidden hunger occurs when the quality of food people eat does not meet their nutrient requirements, so that they are not getting the essential vitamins and minerals they need for their growth and development. Deficiencies in calories and micronutrients are reflected in the four component indicators used to calculate the GHI (prevalence of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality). These deficiencies may result from a range of underlying factors, including household food insecurity; inadequate maternal health or childcare practices; or inadequate access to health services, safe water, and sanitation.

The problem of hunger is complex, and different terms are used to describe its various forms. Undernourishment, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is the habitual consumption of too few calories to provide the minimum dietary energy an individual requires to live a healthy and productive life, given that person’s sex, age, stature, and physical activity level. Undernutrition goes beyond calories and signifies deficiencies in any or all of the following: energy, protein, and/or essential vitamins and minerals. Undernutrition is the result of inadequate intake of food in terms of either quantity or quality, poor utilization of nutrients due to infections or other illnesses, or a combination of these immediate causes.

While many countries experience widespread hunger, famine is a specific term defined by the UN as occurring when certain conditions are met: when at least 20 percent of the population faces extreme food shortages, acute child malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent— meaning that children experience the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition—and two out of 10,000 people die from starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease on a daily basis.

India has long fought to ensure that the country would have a sufficient food supply to avert the devastation of famine experienced many decades ago. Indeed, the increases in rice and wheat yields brought about during India’s Green Revolution largely helped to establish India’s steady food supply, particularly of staple grains. These advances have ensured that famine in India has not been a threat in recent history. However, the Global Hunger Index is a multidimensional measure of hunger that reflects not only calorie deficiencies but also undernutrition, and it is child undernutrition, in particular, that drives up India’s GHI score. There are huge opportunities for India to tackle the full range of factors affecting all forms of hunger and undernutrition, just as it successfully tackled famine in past decades.

The Global Hunger Index report is peer reviewed by external experts and the methodology has long been established and tested. The GHI incorporates four indicators to reflect the multidimensional nature of hunger. Together, they reflect deficiencies in calories as well as in micronutrients. These indicators are part of the internationally recognized set of indicators designed to measure progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 “Zero Hunger,” upon which the international community—including India—agreed. The prevalence of undernourishment is an indicator for SDG 2.1, on ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all. Child stunting and wasting rates are indicators for SDG 2.2, on ending all forms of malnutrition. Reducing child stunting and wasting by 2025 are also internationally agreed World Health Assembly targets. Reducing preventable deaths of children under five years of age is listed as SDG 3.2.

By combining the proportion of undernourished in the population (1/3 of the GHI score) with the indicators relating to children under age five (2/3 of the GHI score), the GHI captures both the food supply situation of the population as a whole and the effects of inadequate nutrition within a particularly vulnerable subset of the population.

Three out of four indicators used in the calculation of the Global Hunger Index relate primarily to children because children are particularly vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies. A deficiency of nutrients places them at high risk of physical and mental impairment and death. The most critical time for good nutrition is the 1000-day window from the beginning of the mother's pregnancy to a child's second birthday. Child stunting has been shown to be associated with impaired early motor and cognitive development, with potentially life-long consequences for the individual and for society as a whole. Child wasting is the most immediate, visible, and life-threatening form of malnutrition, resulting from the failure to prevent malnutrition among the most vulnerable children. Child mortality reflects that death is the most serious consequence of hunger, and children are the most vulnerable. It also improves the GHI’s ability to reflect deficiencies of essential vitamins and minerals. For many children who die from infectious diseases, the indirect cause of death is a weakened immune system due to a lack of dietary energy, vitamins, and minerals. Since the first three indicators—the proportion of undernourished and the prevalence of stunting and wasting in children—do not capture premature death as the most tragic consequence of hunger, the under-five mortality rate is also included.

The prevalence of undernourishment indicator is calculated by the experts of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) using several factors. Prevalence of undernourishment takes into account the average per capita availability of food as obtained through carefully constructed food balance sheets. Food balance sheets are based primarily on data officially reported by the member countries, including India.

Prevalence of undernourishment also considers the calorie requirements of the population (based on data on age distribution for males and females, distribution of heights, and other key determinants of dietary energy requirements). Also, prevalence of undernourishment takes into account the distribution of calorie intake in the population as estimated through official consumption surveys conducted by governments.  When governments do not provide recent consumption survey data, changes in the distribution of calorie intake in the population are estimated using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) survey data, collected as part of the Gallup World Poll, which has a sample size of 3,000 in India. The latest household consumption survey data that India has released were collected in 2011. The methodology for estimating prevalence of undernourishment is described in FAO’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 report (Annex 1B).

Prevalence of undernourishment values calculated in this way are used to measure progress toward the SDGs. Likewise, the GHI uses prevalence of undernourishment values reported by FAO whether or not governments have provided official consumption survey data.

India’s per capita dietary energy supply has gone up somewhat in recent years. However, this increase has been offset by increases in the incidence of caloric losses at the retail distribution level, increased dietary energy requirements of the population, and an increased coefficient of variation (a measure of the inequality of caloric intake across a given population). As a result, India’s prevalence of undernourishment has increased somewhat each year between 2016–2018 and 2020–2022.

Children are considered stunted or wasted if their height-for-age or weight-for-height, respectively, deviates substantially from the internationally recognized global WHO Child Growth Standards. Some have argued that India’s rates of child wasting and child stunting are high because Indian children are genetically shorter and thinner than other children in the world.

The WHO Child Growth Standards are based on the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study (MGRS), which generated curves for assessing the growth and development of children the world over. The MGRS collected primary growth data and related information from healthy breastfed infants and young children from diverse backgrounds and cultural settings, including India. After data collection (which spanned five years to create a database for children growing in their first five years of life), the data from the different parts of the globe were slightly but not statistically significantly different, meaning there were no significant differences in how children were growing, provided they grew up in an optimal environment. The WHO Child Growth Standards therefore depict normal early childhood growth under optimal environmental conditions and can be used to assess children everywhere, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and type of feeding. There is no doubt that genetic factors influence individual height. A wide variation in height can therefore be observed among healthy, well-nourished children of any given age. The WHO Child Growth Standards consider this by allowing for a range of heights around the age-specific middle values in the growth curves. Children are considered stunted only if their height deviates considerably from the middle value defined for their age (that is, their height-for-age is more than two standard deviations below the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards).

Globally, it is estimated that undernutrition is responsible for 45 percent of deaths among children under the age of five (Black et al. 2013). This figure is widely cited, including in UNICEF (2023), WHO (2022) and Ulahannan et al. (2022). In India specifically, the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative Malnutrition Collaborators found that, “Malnutrition was the predominant risk factor for death in children younger than 5 years of age in every state of India in 2017, accounting for 68.2% of the total under-5 deaths,” (Swaminathan et al. 2019). In other words, malnutrition accounts for over two thirds of child deaths in India, exceeding the global average.

Child mortality is included in the calculation of GHI scores for the following reasons: it reflects that death is the most serious consequence of hunger, and children are the most vulnerable; improves the GHI’s ability to reflect deficiencies of essential vitamins and minerals; and complements stunting and wasting, which only partially capture the mortality risk of undernutrition.

In the compilation of the stunting and wasting values, we prioritize and use survey estimates that have been vetted for inclusion in the Joint Malnutrition Estimates and/or the WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition, wherever possible. The GHI uses the same data sources for all countries to calculate the respective country scores. This ensures that all the rates used have been produced using comparable methodologies. Introducing exceptions to this process for any country or countries would compromise the comparability of the results and the ranking. We would be glad to consider the inclusion of the Poshan tracker data for future editions of the GHI once they have been included in the UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Joint Malnutrition Estimates Joint Data Set of Survey Estimates and/or the WHO Global Database on Child Nutrition.