THE Global Hunger Index (GHI), published by two European non-government organizations, has been universally slammed in India both by government representatives, including the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and by professional economists. Poor methodology, questionable data collection through sample surveys and inadequate understanding of the difference between hunger and malnutrition made GHI an easy target.
As economist Sonalde Desai reminded us in a recent newspaper column, the controversy draws attention to the difficulties in constructing such indices in general and diverts attention from substantial arguments relating to statistics, their collection, the construction of an. . .
