Only 1 Pct of Indians Starved in 2009-2010?

Bangalore: India has been battling hunger and poverty constantly. Even then there are 46 percent of Indian children malnourished, with about one-third of Indians reported to have body mass index lower than 18.5. According to a recent report by government’s top research organization just one percent of the population in the country sleep without two square meals a day, as reported by Chetan Chauhan for Hindustan Times.

As per the latest survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on adequacy of food consumption in Indian households, nearly 99 percent in rural India and 99.6 percent in urban India got adequate food in 2009-10. That year food prices rose because of the drought in the prior year.

Contradicting the popular belief, the household survey reported that the percentage of homes getting sufficient meals every day has grown from 94.5 percent in 1993-94 to 99 percent in rural India and from 98 percent to 99 percent in urban India.

A senior faculty at Delhi based Jawaharlal Nehru University, Himanshu said, “The finding is most absurd.” According to him the reason is in the manner in which the question is framed in the NSSO survey. The question in the survey is not directly focused on hunger rather on whether the person feels hungry or not, as reported by Hindustan Times.

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