The Modi government obviously thinks it’s easier to change the narrative than the reality. Whatever the narrative of being the world’s third largest economy (PPP), the reality that gnaws at Modi’s bones is India’s ranks ng in the Global Hunger Index.
“While bristling at the ratings, what the minister didn’t reveal was that her ministry had over the past year made multiple attempts at lobbying with the publishers of the Global Hunger Index to bump up India’s ranking.
Then union minister Smriti Irani wrote to NITI Aayog in February 2020, asking the think tank to “rectify” “issues” in the index.
The government wanted the publishers to make critical changes to how they score the countries. One of them was to focus less on malnutrition among children, an indicator where India performed poorly – even by the government's own admission – and dragged down its overall score. The government thought the hunger index was too “biased” towards children and even argued that a large number of infant deaths aren’t actually tied to malnutrition.
This was not an isolated attempt at influencing a global index. The Reporters’ Collective investigation has revealed that it is part of a “whole-of-government approach” devised by the Prime Minister’s Office to closely monitor 30 global indices and reach out to agencies that publish the indices to convince them to change their parameters – what they measure – if India is doing badly in their reports, which it often does.”
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