With 194m undernourished, India tops world hunger list
The number of undernourished people has fallen from one billion to 795 million
PHOTO: NPR
India has the highest estimated number of undernourished people in any single country, according to a report published by the United Nations.
An estimated 194.6 million, or about one in every four people in the world are undernourished in India, according to ‘State of Food Security in the World 2015,’ report issued by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.
Worldwide, the number of undernourished people has fallen by 216 million between the years 1990 and 1992, and in 2015, the number went from one billion to 795 million. However, India’s contribution to this fall has been very minimal, with its numbers decreasing by just 15.5 million.
Read: Separate budget to tackle malnutrition
During this, India has overtaken China, which cut its numbers from 289 million in 1990-1992 to 133.8 million in the latest estimates. The fall in China’s population has also ensured that the South-east Asian region contributed the most to this decline.
India missed both the millennium development goal as well as the goal laid out at the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996, when governments of countries from around the world committed to halving the absolute number of undernourished people by 2015.
Of the 172 countries that were being monitored, 29 including Nepal met the WFS goal.
Although India and China contributed to the overall hunger in the developing regions, the highest burden of hunger was found to be in Southern Asia.
Read: A home without food: Afghan refugees return to malnourished country
The estimates for the years 2014 till 2016 proposed that about 281 million people were undernourished in the region, marking only a slight reduction of 10 million from the number in 1990 till 1992 of 291 million.
The slow reduction in India, in particular, had a significant influence on results for the region.
The most noteworthy exceptions in the region were Bangladesh and Nepal. Bangladesh has reached the MDG target with the National Food Policy framework adopted in the mid-2000s being given the credit for this achievement. Nepal achieved both MDG as well as WFS target and is inching towards bringing it down to less than 5% of the population.
In India, the undernourished constitute just over 15% of the population.
India’s lack of progress has remained a mystery. Explanations offered for the inconsistency between food consumption and income levels in India ranged from increasing inequalities, to poor data and further to the challenges of capturing the energy requirements of the population.
Calorie consumption being lower than what per capita incomes and poverty rates would suggest remained inexplicable, the report noted.
Undernourished in Pakistan
Pakistan is home to about 41.4 million undernourished people, according to the State of Food Security in the World 2015 report, with the change so far accounting for 44.2 per cent.
This article originally appeared in The Times of India.
An estimated 194.6 million, or about one in every four people in the world are undernourished in India, according to ‘State of Food Security in the World 2015,’ report issued by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.
Worldwide, the number of undernourished people has fallen by 216 million between the years 1990 and 1992, and in 2015, the number went from one billion to 795 million. However, India’s contribution to this fall has been very minimal, with its numbers decreasing by just 15.5 million.
Read: Separate budget to tackle malnutrition
During this, India has overtaken China, which cut its numbers from 289 million in 1990-1992 to 133.8 million in the latest estimates. The fall in China’s population has also ensured that the South-east Asian region contributed the most to this decline.
India missed both the millennium development goal as well as the goal laid out at the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996, when governments of countries from around the world committed to halving the absolute number of undernourished people by 2015.
Of the 172 countries that were being monitored, 29 including Nepal met the WFS goal.
Although India and China contributed to the overall hunger in the developing regions, the highest burden of hunger was found to be in Southern Asia.
Read: A home without food: Afghan refugees return to malnourished country
The estimates for the years 2014 till 2016 proposed that about 281 million people were undernourished in the region, marking only a slight reduction of 10 million from the number in 1990 till 1992 of 291 million.
The slow reduction in India, in particular, had a significant influence on results for the region.
The most noteworthy exceptions in the region were Bangladesh and Nepal. Bangladesh has reached the MDG target with the National Food Policy framework adopted in the mid-2000s being given the credit for this achievement. Nepal achieved both MDG as well as WFS target and is inching towards bringing it down to less than 5% of the population.
In India, the undernourished constitute just over 15% of the population.
India’s lack of progress has remained a mystery. Explanations offered for the inconsistency between food consumption and income levels in India ranged from increasing inequalities, to poor data and further to the challenges of capturing the energy requirements of the population.
Calorie consumption being lower than what per capita incomes and poverty rates would suggest remained inexplicable, the report noted.
Undernourished in Pakistan
Pakistan is home to about 41.4 million undernourished people, according to the State of Food Security in the World 2015 report, with the change so far accounting for 44.2 per cent.
This article originally appeared in The Times of India.