“India is a developing country”. A consistent statement since decades.
One in every four persons of the world is undernourished. The figure has come down from 795 million to 216 million between 1990-92 and 2015. But, there is no heavy contribution from India towards this fall. It is just down by 15.5 million, to say in figures.
In the beginning, it was China, which is over India. But in the recent estimates, it was found that, China has cut down its figure to 133.8 million from 289 million in 1990-92. It was South- east Asian region that contributed most to the 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 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,” revealed by the State of Food Security in the World 2015, released by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome on Wednesday.
The highest burden of hunger was found in Southern Asia, though India and China contributed to the overall hunger reduction in the developing regions.
According to the recent estimates for the years 2014-16, it was suggested that about 281 million people were undernourished in the region, marking only a slight reduction of 10 million from the number in 1990-92 of 291 million.
Bangladesh and Nepal are the notable exceptions in the region. Among the both, Bangladesh has reached the MDG target with the National Food Policy framework. On the other hand, Nepal achieved both MDG as well as WFS target and is now targeting to bring it down to less than 5% of the population. The undernourished constitute just over 15% of the Indian population.
According to the report, the progress of the country is still a puzzle. Reasons for this is the inconsistency between food consumption and income levels in India ranged from increasing inequalities, to poor data, to the challenges of capturing the changing energy requirements of the population. The calorie consumption being lower than what per capita incomes and poverty rates would suggest remained inexplicable.
By Phani
