Rubbishing India’s poor ranking in the recently released Global Hunger Index 2021, wherein India has slipped to 101st position below Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, Arvind Panagariya, professor of economics at Columbia University and former vice chairman, NITI Ayog has said that data collection and methodologies used for Global Hunger Index 2021 are flawed.


Coming down heavily on how surveys are being carried out and data is collected, Panagariya said, “ this is an industry going on for a long time… it is important to look at who are they calling for data and how it is being collected. If they are doing a telephonic call in the midst of a wave and when there is migration and there is pessimism everywhere ... and when waves of covid are not synchronized across the world.” 


Panagariya said that many people have made it their source of living to create these indexes with no clear basis to it as they don’t do these surveys.



“Armchair people sitting in offices around the world create these indexes. They have made it their source of living to create these indexes with no clear basis to it as they don’t do these surveys. None of them are doing surveys properly. They can’t do it. When you are trying to create a wall under index …. where the data in many countries is so poorly collected …. you are relying on so little information and in effect countries that have minimal information determine the basis of the construction of your index itself.”


The former economist at the Asian Development Bank said he does not look at indexes and that he had earlier also written a column that three different methodologies were being used to collect data and all were flawed.     


Panagariya said that India’s own survey is done by NSSO which is more reliable and has a history of asking people “how many days during the year did you go without a meal or empty stomach hungry to bed etc., and those numbers are also recorded in columns by


Swaminathan Iyer and others. “The numbers are tiny and also declining over time.”
He added that India’s food supplies have been growing over time and PDS itself has expanded. In a large country like India there will be pockets of hunger that we will need to address, he said. 


While responding to a question on how confident he felt about IMF, Moody’s, S&P as well as RBI, and others pegging India’s growth to 9.3% to 9.5% in 2021,  Panagariya said the Pandemic is extremely difficult to predict. Despite India doing phenomenally good vaccination numbers, he could not predict the course of the virus but most certainly the numbers will be realized. “Fundamentally economy is sound. If none of the exogenic shocks happen 9%-10% growth is extremely doable” he said.


Speaking on the Air India sale to the Tata Group and how he saw the line-up of sale of other  PSU’s he said, he saw Air India sale to Tata as a source of great relief and with this, the strategic disinvestment program has started. He however added that we will have to see 2-3 more sales to really tell that things are on the roll.


On being asked if India will be able to achieve its target of both doses of vaccination for the 940 million population by December 2021, Panagariya said it will be a challenge. For the population that chooses not to come forward for the vaccine, it will be a problem to create a vaccine demand for that segment.


Responding to the question on coal crisis and if India has done enough to build alternative sources of energy, Pangariya said, while the country has done phenomenally well over the last few years under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, it will be silly to think that the country can go off fossil fuel faster than the rest of world. “We have to be continuing to develop our conventional resources including coal in the next few decades as also its import.”


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