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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Mahagathbandhan demands ‘official language’ status for Bhojpuri in Bihar
Patna (PTI): The demand for grant of “official language” status to Bhojpuri, arguably the most widely spoken dialect in Bihar, has intensified with the opposition Mahagathbandhan strongly coming out in support of it in the state.
Senior leaders of the RJD, Congress and CPI(ML) Liberation, constituents of the Mahagathbandhan, said they would raise the issue in Parliament.
The old demand got a fresh impetus after the Union Cabinet’s recent decision to accord classical language status to five more languages - Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese.
The number of such languages now is 11, since Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia got the tag earlier.
CPI(ML) Liberation’s Lok Sabha MP Sudama Prasad said, “The language is spoken widely in districts such as Bhojpur, Rohtas, Kaimur, Buxar, Saran, East Champaran, West Champaran, Gopalganj, Siwan and Jehanabad in Bihar, and several parts of Jharkhand. Why is the Centre silent on inclusion of Bhojpuri in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution?”
The 8th Schedule of the Constitution now has 22 languages. Fourteen were initially included in the Constitution, while eight more added later.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs website, there are demands for inclusion of 38 more languages in the Eighth Schedule and one of them is Bhojpuri.
“The Nitish Kumar government must send a detailed report to the central government seeking granting of official language status to Bhojpuri. We will raise this issue in the coming session of parliament,” Prasad told PTI.
The NDA government in Bihar as well as at the Centre are giving step-motherly treatment to Bhojpuri speaking people, RJD’s Buxar MP Sudhakar Singh alleged.
“We (Mahagathbandhan) demand immediate inclusion of Bhojpuri in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution so that it gets official language status. Earlier, we raised this issue in the state assembly, but the Nitish Kumar government has turned a deaf ear towards it,” said the RJD MP.
Senior Congress leader and MLA Sanjay Kumar Tiwary alias Munna Tiwary said it is one of the oldest demands of the people who speak Bhojpuri.
“Scheduled status brings certain advantages to a language. It makes it mandatory for the government to take measures for the development of a scheduled language so that it grows and becomes an effective means of communication in due course of time,” Tiwary said.
Responding to the demand of Mahagathbandhan leaders, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vjay Kumar Chaudhary told PTI that the demand for the official language status to a language must be backed with substantial facts.
“No one can deny official language status to any language if the demand is based on substantial facts," Chaudhary said.
