India promises to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015, but the promise seems futile when one looks at the new 2010 Global Hunger Index. India has been ranked 67, way below neighbouring countries like China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in a new global hunger index prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute.
The index rated 84 countries on the basis of three leading indicators — prevalence of child malnutrition, rate of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.
China is rated much ahead of India at the ninth place.
Persistent inequalities, ineffective delivery of public services, weak accountability systems and gaps in the implementation of pro-poor policies are the major hurdles in the progress.
It seems India will find it difficult to get on the tracks of attaining goals like health, gender equality and environmental sustainability unless intensive national efforts are made by government and all sections of civil-society working in tandem.
The hunger figure of 2010 marked a nearly 10 per cent decline from the 2009 level, with the reduction concentrated in Asia, where 80 million fewer people are estimated to be going hungry this year.
According to the 2009 Global Hunger Index, India ranked 65 out of 88 countries, and slipped two positions down in 2010.
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Countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal too are in a better position than India. Pakistan’s economic growth rate is much lower than India’s, but the nation seems to have done better than its archrival neighbour in curbing hunger.
Despite achieving impressive economic growth, 410 million people living in poverty should be a wake up call for government to probe and work for it.
In recent times prices of necessary food items like rice, wheat, staple vegetables etc have soared by 25-50 per cent putting massive burden on the common man. Inflation has become the major barrier in fighting hunger and malnourishment in the country.
To overcome the shortage of food, government should be more vigilant in the storage and distribution. Spoiling of grains and then a number of people dying due to hunger is a sheer case of poor governance.
India has become a home to underweight children as 42 per cent of the undernourished children are from India. Low nutritional and health level of the generations to come should be an alarming call for a nation that aspires to meet millennium development goals.
