Hunger

Hunger in Madhya Pradesh

(Brief of the IFPRI Report)

Released on 14th October 2008

A recently released report by International Food Policy Research Institute notes that not a single state in India falls in the ‘low hunger’ or ‘moderate hunger’ categories defined by the GHI 2008. Instead, most states fall in the ‘alarming’ category, with one state Madhya Pradesh – falling in the ‘extremely alarming’ category. IFPRI Report shows the position of the 17 Indian states relative to the countries for which the Global Hunger Index 2008 is reported. India’s rank on the GHI 2008 is 66; the ranks of the different states in relation to the GHI range from 34 for the state of Punjab (whose ISHI score lies places it between Nicaragua and Ghana) to 82 for Madhya Pradesh (whose ISHI score places it between Chad and Ethiopia). Ten of the 17 states have an ISHI rank that is above India’s (66), which indicates that these states are relative out performers.

This report also presents the association between the hunger index and the rate of economic growth for each state. The figure shows little evidence of a consistent relationship between the two variables. A state that experienced negative real growth (in net state domestic product per capita) between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 (e.g., Madhya Pradesh) has a high hunger index, but so did states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh that experienced much higher rates of economic growth over this time period. Again, Punjab stands out as a remarkable “positive outlier”, with its much lower hunger index than states such as Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana whose rate of economic growth was two to threetimes larger during the same period (<2%>