According to a U.N. survey, the second most populated country in the world has more obese adults and anaemic women.
According to a U.N. report, India’s population of 224.3 million undernourished individuals has decreased over the past 15 years. However, the number of obese adults and anaemic women has increased in the world’s second-most populated nation.
According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 report, which was released on July 6 by the World Health Organization (WHO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, World Food Programme (WFP), and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 828 million people worldwide were suffering from hunger in 2021, up about 46 million from 2020 and 150 million since the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak.
According to the research, there were 224.3 million undernourished persons in India in 2019–21, down from 247.8 million in 2004–06.
It stated that the number of stunted children under the age of five decreased from 52.3 million in 2012 to 36.1 million in 2020 and the number of overweight children under the age of five decreased from three million to 2.2 million in 2020.
However, India, which has a population of over 1.38 billion, saw an increase in the number of obese adults from 25.2 million in 2012 to 34.3 million in 2016, and an increase in the number of women with anaemia between the ages of 15 and 49 from 171.5 million in 2012 to 187.3 million in 2019.
According to the survey, from 11.2 million in 2012 to 14 million in 2020, exclusively breastfed infants up to the age of five months were reported.
In India, the prevalence of stunting in children under the age of five decreased from 41.7 percent in 2012 to 30.9 percent in 2020, and the prevalence of overweight children under the age of five decreased from 2.4 percent in 2012 to 1.9 percent in 2020. In percentage terms, the prevalence of undernourishment in the country’s entire population stood at 21.6 percent in 2004-06 and fell to 16.3 percent in 2019-21.
The percentage of obese adults in India climbed from 3.1 to 3.9 percent in 2016, whereas the percentage of anaemic women aged 15 to 49 decreased somewhat from 53.2 to 53 percent in that same year.
According to the research, 973.3 million Indians, or roughly 70.5 percent of the population, were unable to afford a nutritious meal in 2020, up from 948.6 million in 2019. (69.4 percent).
What factors contribute to India’s low ranking on the Global Hunger Index? What are the potential solutions?
In India, there were 966.6 million individuals who could not afford to eat a nutritious diet in 2018, down from almost a billion in 2017.
In lower- and middle-income countries, consumer subsidies are often given in the form of cash or in-kind payments under social security programmes.
For instance, it was said that the targeted public distribution system for grains in India and the food assistance programme (BPNT) based on electronic vouchers for rice in Indonesia both offer significant subsidies to ultimate consumers.
According to the report, “the most notable example of a [Lower-middle-income countries] LMIC is India, where the food and agricultural policy has historically focused on protecting consumers by ensuring affordable food prices, through export restrictions [on wheat, non-basmati rice, and milk, among others], and through marketing regulations around pricing and public procurement, public food stockholding, and distribution of a wide range of agricultural commodities.”
In India, 21% of children are underweight, according to the Global Hunger Index
As a result, farmers have consistently experienced pricing disincentives (negative NRPs). In order to make up for the price disincentives caused by trade and market measures and to increase production and self-sufficiency in the nation, input subsidies and expenditure on general services, such as infrastructure and R&D, have been frequently utilised, it was said.
The number of individuals who experience hunger increased in 2020 and continued to climb in 2021, reaching 9.8 percent of the global population after having remained mostly steady since 2015, according to the research.
In comparison, the numbers for 2019 and 2020 are 8% and 9.3%, respectively.
According to the estimate, there were 2.3 billion people who had moderate to severe problems getting enough food in 2021. This was before the Ukraine war, which has led to rises in the price of grain, fertiliser, and energy.
Based on data from 2021, the report “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” presents a dismal picture, claiming that the figures “should remove any remaining concerns that the world is slipping backwards in its efforts to address hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its manifestations”.
It forewarned that more price hikes in the first half of 2022 would emerge from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which “is disrupting supply networks and further influencing prices of grain, fertiliser, and energy.”
Additionally, they said that supply chains are being disrupted by harsher and frequent climatic disasters, particularly in low-income nations.
Together, Ukraine and Russia produced about a third of the world’s wheat, barley, and half of its sunflower oil. Russia and its ally Belarus are the Nos. 2 and 3 producers of potash, a vital component of fertiliser, respectively.
A whopping 924 million people, or 11.7% of the world’s population, experienced acute food insecurity, an increase of 207 million in only two years.
In comparison to males, 31.9 percent of women worldwide experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in 2021, compared to 27.6 percent of men. This is a gap of more than 4 percentage points, up from 3 percentage points in 2020.
In 2020, 3.1 billion individuals, an increase of 112 million from 2019, were unable to afford a nutritious diet due to rising consumer food costs brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the containment measures that were implemented.
Worst type of malnutrition, wasting, which ups a child’s risk of mortality by up to 12 times, affects an estimated 45 million children under the age of five.
A chronic shortage of vital nutrients in their diets also resulted in stunted growth and development among 149 million children under the age of five, and 39 million of them were overweight.
The heads of the five U.N. agencies said in this year’s Foreword, “This report regularly underscores the escalation of three primary causes of food insecurity and malnutrition: war, climatic extremes, and economic shocks, linked with widening disparities.
“The question at hand is not whether adversities will persist or not, but rather how we must behave more courageously to create resilience against further shocks,” it continued.