The Global Hunger Index was released recently. According to this index, Bharat ranked 111th out of 125 countries that were a part of this study. Bharat at 111th ranked even lower than Pakistan(102nd) and Bangladesh (81st). Countries like Sri Lanka and Nepal also fared way better than Bharat on the index.
There are many such indexes – the Global Poverty Index, the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, the Global Press Freedom Index, the World Happiness Index, etc. Because of the simplistic and catchy nature of such reports, the media jumps up at their findings and these reports make news all over the place. Considering the enormous media coverage they receive and their ability to impact public opinion (if Bharat ranks pretty low in the Global Hunger Index 2023, many Bharatiya citizens are going to think about it and create a negative perception of the government), such reports are highly prone to manipulation and distortion.
Most journalists are not trained in scientific research methodology, so they take these reports at face value and start making simplistic connections between the report’s findings and the performance of the government on various parameters. Most of these reports are either published by the UN or some western NGOs. The Global Hunger Index, for example, is released by Welt Hunger Hilfe and Concern Worldwide, non-governmental organizations based in Germany and Ireland respectively. The Global Press Freedom Index is published by an organization called Reporters Without Borders which is headquartered in Paris. None of these indexes are published from anywhere outside the US and Europe. Yet they claim to provide an accurate assessment of issues impacting the whole world. How about Bharat start its own Global Press Freedom Ratings or Global Corruption Ratings? Would the international media take these ratings seriously? Or would they start looking for faults in the methodology of these indexes?
Bharat’s positioning in the Global Hunger Index 2023 doesn’t even stand the test of logic. According to the 2023 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, Bharat made remarkable progress in poverty reduction, lifting 415 million people out of poverty within a time span of merely 15 years. So if Bharat made such pathbreaking progress in poverty reduction, how can it fare so miserably on the hunger front? Logically speaking, one would assume that if a country makes consistent progress in poverty reduction, the per capita income of its citizens would see a consistent rise, resulting in a better quality of life and a reduction in hunger. How come then the Global Hunger Index takes Bharat 5 steps down from even its 2022 performance, when the per capita income of Bharatiyas is consistently on the rise?
The government of Bharat has rejected Global Hunger Index 2023 ranking by calling it a flawed measure of hunger that didn’t reflect the country’s true position, as per various media reports.
The Global Hunger Index suffers from “serious methodological issues and shows a malafide intent”, according to the Women & Child Development Ministry. As per a statement issued by the WCD, three out of four parameters based on which the index calculates its results are related to child health, and thus, they cannot be representative of the health status of the entire population. The WCD further stated that the fourth indicator, the proportion of the undernourished population was based on an opinion poll conducted on a minuscule sample size of 3,000 and thus cannot be reliable.
If you go to the site of the “Global Hunger Index”, you can see the parameters clearly listed: Undernourishment, Child Stunting, Child Wasting, and Child Mortality. The Bharatiya government’s response seems to be spot on there. How can parameters solely related to the status of children’s health be representative of the health of the adult population? The arguments of the index makers are that the inclusion of categories of child stunting and child wasting allows them to “document both acute and chronic undernutrition”. But this argument still fails to answer the question of how can measuring the status of children’s health be conclusive of the hunger levels of the entire population.
According to experts, indices like the Democracy Index and Press Freedom Index are based mostly on qualitative surveys from a small sample. For example, for the Press Freedom Index, a questionnaire would be sent to a small sample of journalists. Now, the basis of this selection can be questionable. There is a lot of scope for bias and manipulation in such surveys. For example, if the journalists to whom the questionnaire is sent are left-leaning, they will have their own biases and rank countries with non-left-leaning or nationalist governments lower in the order. Basically, there is no scientific basis to conclude that democracy or press freedom has deteriorated in the countries that rank lower in the index. One can’t help noticing that since the Modi government came to power, India’s performance in these indices has gone from bad to worse. A pattern can certainly be detected by studying the politics of organizations that conducted the research. If the index is published by a left-leaning think tank, they would find a way to downgrade countries with nationalist regimes.
Coming back to the Global Hunger Index, it’s been barely a couple of days since the 2023 Index report came out and if you use the hashtag “Global Hunger Index” on X, you will see a barrage of posts by the woke lobby vociferously quoting India’s low ranking in the index and shaming Bharat on the supposed low quality of life of its people. Such sensational and simplistic rankings provide immediate fodder for propaganda and misinformation. Since many Bharatiya people tend to associate anything coming from “western” sources to be credible and scientific, this propaganda has an effect, unfortunately. You will find many educated Bharatiyas quoting such indexes to argue how Bharat has a lot of catching up to do in the global order.
It’s strange that there are so many Bharatiya think tanks and still no one takes the initiative of starting an index with a Bharatiya perspective. As Bharat’s geo-political clout increases, it also needs to be more proactive in not just critiquing the western hegemony of academic and media discourse but also create its own alternative discourse. We need to be more proactive in redefining the norms by introducing our own indices, our own version of “Nobel Prize” and “Booker” and use our soft power to make the world acknowledge and appreciate the Bharatiya perspective.
