Which is the India's rank in global hunger Index 2023 ?

Question

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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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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.  (c) 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.  (d) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2024 Q87 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q87 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer