MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 87 of 100

Correct — option (2), 111. The Global Hunger Index 2023, released on 12 October 2023 by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, ranked India 111th out of the 125 countries for which a score could be calculated, with a score of 28.7 on the 100-point scale, which places the country in the 'serious' band. Two figures inside that score are worth carrying, because they are what the rank is made of: India's child wasting rate of 18.7 per cent was the highest of any country in the report, and its rate of undernourishment was 16.6 per cent. Every immediate neighbour ranked above India — Sri Lanka at 60, Nepal at 69, Bangladesh at 81 and Pakistan at 102 — which is the comparison that made the report news. The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development rejected the finding, describing the index as a flawed measure of hunger that does not reflect India's true position, an objection built mainly on the small sample used for the undernourishment estimate and on the argument that three of the four indicators measure child nutrition rather than hunger in the population at large. Note the printed order of the options, which runs 100, 111, 101, 123 rather than ascending: the two numbers nearest the answer are separated on the page, so a candidate reading quickly can mark the wrong one. The severity bands the score is read against are fixed, which is worth knowing because it lets a score be interpreted without a rank: below 10 is low, 10 to 19.9 moderate, 20 to 34.9 serious, 35 to 49.9 alarming and 50 or above extremely alarming. India's 28.7 therefore sits in the middle of the 'serious' range rather than at its edge, and a movement of a point or two in a later edition would not change the band.

• (1)100 — This was India's rank in an earlier edition of the same index — 100th out of 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2017, with a score of 31.4. It is the most dangerous of the three wrong numbers because it is a real Indian rank, merely from the wrong year, and 'India ranked 100th' is a phrase that circulated widely at the time. A round number also feels like a remembered fact in a way that 111 does not. The defence is to store a rank with its year and with the size of the field attached, since the number of countries ranked changes from edition to edition.
• (3)101 — This is a near-miss on the answer, differing from 111 by a single digit, and it exists to punish approximate recall — the candidate who remembers 'a hundred and something' and then reconstructs the rest. It also sits one place away from option (1), so a reader who half-remembers the 2017 figure can drift onto it. The printed order of the options makes this worse, since 111 and 101 are not adjacent on the page. Rank questions are pure recall and there is no way to reason to the answer, so the only protection is to have learnt the number exactly.
• (4)123 — This is the highest number offered and it invites confusion between a rank and the size of the field: the 2023 index scored and ranked 125 countries, so a candidate who remembers something close to 125 may take it for India's position. Rank and field size are different quantities and both change from year to year, which is exactly why the index itself cautions that ranks from different editions are not directly comparable — the methodology and the underlying data are revised each time. Learn the pair '111 out of 125' as a single fact rather than as two loose numbers.

The Global Hunger Index is an annual composite measure published by the Irish agency Concern Worldwide and the German agency Welthungerhilfe. It scores countries on a 100-point scale where 0 means no hunger and 100 is the worst, and the score is built from four indicators grouped in two halves. One indicator measures the population as a whole: undernourishment, the share of people whose caloric intake is insufficient. Three measure children under five: stunting, or low height for age, which signals chronic undernutrition; wasting, or low weight for height, which signals acute undernutrition; and under-five mortality. Undernourishment and child mortality each carry a third of the weight and the two child-nutrition indicators share the remaining third. Scores are read against fixed severity bands — low, moderate, serious, alarming and extremely alarming — and India's 28.7 in 2023 fell in the 'serious' band. Because three of the four indicators concern children, the index is often criticised in India as a measure of child nutrition rather than of hunger, and the publishers themselves caution that ranks from different editions cannot be compared directly, since both the methodology and the data revisions change.

Global indices are among the most reliably examined current-affairs items in Indian state services, and MPSC asks them in the simplest possible way: a rank, a year and four numbers. There is no reasoning route to the answer, so the preparation has to be a compact index diary maintained through the year. For each major index, record the publishing body, the year of the edition, India's rank, the size of the field and one substantive figure — for the Global Hunger Index that would be the score of 28.7 and the child wasting rate of 18.7 per cent. Recording the publisher matters as much as the rank, because the other common form of the question asks who publishes what: the Global Hunger Index comes from Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, the Human Development Index from the UNDP, the Global Innovation Index from WIPO, the Ease of Doing Business rankings from the World Bank while they were published, and the Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum. A second habit is to note the government's response where there is one, since MPSC has been known to ask which ministry rejected an index finding.

• India ranked 111th out of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2023, with a score of 28.7, in the 'serious' severity band.
• The 2023 index was released on 12 October 2023 by Concern Worldwide (Ireland) and Welthungerhilfe (Germany).
• The index is built from four indicators: undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and under-five mortality.
• India's child wasting rate of 18.7 per cent in the 2023 report was the highest recorded for any country in that edition; undernourishment stood at 16.6 per cent.
• In the 2023 rankings Sri Lanka stood at 60, Nepal at 69, Bangladesh at 81 and Pakistan at 102 — all above India.
• The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development rejected the 2023 finding, calling the index a flawed measure of hunger.
• The publishers caution that ranks are not comparable across editions because methodology and data are revised each year.

• Carrying over a rank from an earlier edition — India was 100th out of 119 in 2017 and 107th out of 121 in 2022
• Confusing the rank with the number of countries ranked; 111 was the rank and 125 the field
• Reporting the index as an output of an Indian or United Nations body; it is published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe
• Treating the year-on-year movement in rank as a measured deterioration, which the publishers themselves warn against

Index questions appear in every MPSC current-affairs section, usually as a one-line rank recall of the kind printed here, and occasionally as a matching item pairing indices with the organisations that publish them. The distractors are built from adjacent numbers and from the country's rank in a previous edition, so both must be learnt with their years. Keep a running list through the year of every index in which India's position was reported, together with the publisher, the field size and one supporting statistic.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which organisations jointly publish the Global Hunger Index ?

  • (a)The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme
  • (b)Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe
  • (c)The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
  • (d)The United Nations Development Programme and UNICEF

  Answer(b) Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe — the Irish and German aid agencies that have published the index since the International Food Policy Research Institute handed the project to them. The FAO's undernourishment estimates feed one of the four indicators, but the FAO does not publish the index.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT one of the four indicators used to calculate the Global Hunger Index ?

  • (a)Undernourishment
  • (b)Child stunting
  • (c)Maternal mortality ratio
  • (d)Under-five mortality

  Answer(c) Maternal mortality ratio — the four indicators are undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and under-five mortality. Maternal mortality is a separate health indicator and forms no part of the index.