New Delhi: A UN estimate has raised questions about the Indian government’s figures on food assistance needs. The UN report, released this week, suggests that over a billion people in India couldn’t afford a healthy diet in 2021, contradicting the government’s claim that only 813 million people require food assistance.
According to the 2023 report on food security and nutrition by five UN agencies, 74.1% of Indians, approximately 1.043 billion people, were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021. The report also estimated India’s proportion of undernourished population at 16.6% during 2020-2022.
Comparatively, the report provides percentages of people unable to afford a healthy diet in other countries, including Bangladesh (66%), Pakistan (82%), Iran (30%), China (11)%, Russia (2.6%), the US (1.2%), and the UK (0.4%).
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) released the report amid criticism from food security advocates and nutrition experts who say the Indian government is denying food deprivation and poor nutrition issues in the country.
The Union challenged the FAO report’s estimate of 16.6%, stating that it is based on a survey with a small sample size and biased methodology.
“The data collected from a minuscule sample for a country of India’s size has been used to compute the proportion of undernourished (population in) India which is not only wrong and unethical, it also reeks of obvious bias,” the Union said.
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But some experts see a contradiction between the government’s denial of the FAO estimate that 16.6% — 200 million people, even under the 2011 census — are undernourished and the government’s own estimate that around 813 million people require food assistance, the Telegraph reported.
Last month, the Union cabinet approved the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) – that provides 5kg free food grain per family per month covering 813 million people – for five more years.
The Right to Food Campaign, a non-government network campaigning for food security, said the FAO estimate that 1.043 billion people could not afford a healthy diet was in line with their own assessment that over a billion people need food aid, the Telegraph report said.
“The 813 million estimate is based on the 2011 census — the next census is overdue by two years,” Raj Shekhar, national coordinator with the RFC, said. “Without the new census, many needy, vulnerable people won’t have the ration cards that will entitle them to the PMGKAY benefits.”
A study based on the National Family Health Survey 2021 found that among the poorest 20% households, more than 40% of women, even pregnant women, did not consume dairy products. It also found that over 50% of women and 40% of men in the country did not consume vitamin-A-rich fruits.
S.V. Subramanian, professor of population health and geography at Harvard University, who led the study, said the Union’s own count of 813 million people needing food aid was a “bit of a surprise” because “it seems larger than what is suggested by conventional measures of undernutrition,” the Telegraph report said.
The Union had denied India’s low ranking on the Global Hunger Index earlier this year as well. It had called the exercise “an erroneous measure of hunger with serious methodological issues” that displayed “a malafide intent”.