Global Hunger Index 2024 ranks India under ‘serious’ category
London, Oct 12: The Global Hunger Index (GHI), a tool used by international humanitarian agencies to measure and track hunger levels with GHI scores based on under-nourishment and child mortality indicators across 127 countries, has ranked India 105th, which places it under the “serious” category of the analysis.
The 2024 report, now in its 19th edition, is published this week by Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide and German aid agency Welthungerhilfe to highlight that hunger levels will remain high in many of the world’s poorest countries for several decades in the absence of more progress in measures to tackle the issue.
India is among 42 countries that fall within the "serious" category, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan, with other South Asian neighbours such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka showing better GHI scores to be listed under the “moderate” category.
“With a score of 27.3 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index, India has a level of hunger that is serious,” reads the index entry.
India's GHI Score is based on the values of four component indicators: 13.7 per cent of the population is undernourished, 35.5 per cent of children under five are stunted with 18.7 per cent of them being wasted, and 2.9 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday, the report notes.
For the purpose of the index, undernourishment is defined as the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake, stunted as the share of children under age five who have low height for their age to reflect “chronic” undernutrition, wasting as the share of children under five who have low weight for their height due to “acute” undernutrition, and mortality refers to the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.
Based on the values of these four indicators, a GHI score is calculated for each country on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger, where 0 is the best possible score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst.
Based on its analysis, the report concludes the chances of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030 are looking very unlikely.
“Despite the international community’s repeated emphasis on the importance of the right to adequate food, there remains a troubling disparity between the standards established and the reality that in many parts of the world the right to food is being blatantly disregarded,” the report concludes.
Globally, around 733 million people face hunger each day due to a lack of access to a sufficient amount of food, while about 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.
Some of the African nations are on the extreme ends of the GHI spectrum under the "alarming" category, with wars in Gaza and Sudan being highlighted as having led to exceptional food crises.
Conflict and civil strife are also generating food crises elsewhere, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Mali and Syria, it added.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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