Hungry India

Twelve-year-old Asha residing in a small village of Bankura, West Bengal, was seen eating leaves and twigs to curb her hunger.

- Varsha Singh and Ayantika Halder

Tears rolled down her eyes as she forced herself to swallow these to stop the pain of hunger. There are many like her in this village.

In Mirgitand village in Jharkhand, Thakur Das thrusts hot glowing pokers into the stomach of his child. Everyone in the village is aware of the outcome. The child will scream loudly as the flesh begins to blister. Again and again, the poker will jab at his belly. The more the child screams, the happier everyone will be, because the villagers of Mirgitand in Jharkhand believe that the only way to cure the distended stomachs of their famished children is by jabbing them with hot pokers. India is one of the countries with the lowest reduction in hunger rate in the nine years since the last Global Hunger Index was calculated.

The position of India is constantly declining when it comes to providing food security to its children. Apart from Pakistan and Afghanistan, all of India’s neighbouring countries – Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, outrank India on this list. “At 31.4, India’s 2017 GHI score is at the high end of the ‘serious’ category, and is one of the main factors pushing South Asia to the category of worst performing region on the GHI this year, followed closely by Africa South of the Sahara,” says the Global Hunger Index report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Countries that manage to provide better food security to their people include Kenya, Malawi and even war-torn Iraq. Adding to the despair, it was noticed that the rate of wasting (low- weight for height) has also surged from 20% in 2005-06 to 21% as of 2015-2016.