A billion plus Indians can't afford healthy diet: United Nations

New Delhi: A report by agencies of the United Nations has suggested that more than a billion people in India are not able to afford a healthy diet in 2021. The report, published earlier this week by five UN agencies, stated that 74.1 per cent of Indians, or 1.043 billion people, were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021, The Telegraph reported.

However, the government's count on the same during the year was 813 million people.

Further, the report stated that India's proportion of undernourished population stands at 16.6 per cent during the years 2020-2022. Meanwhile, this is 66 per cent in Bangladesh, 82 per cent in Pakistan, 30 per cent in Iran, 11 per cent in China, 2.6 per cent in Russia, 1.2 per cent in the US and 0.4 per cent in the UK in 2021.

The report published by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the UN, along with other agencies, comes when some food security advocates and nutrition experts suggest that the Indian government is putting real effort into denying the persistence of food deprivation and poor nutrition among large sections of the population.

However, the Union government is all but denying the FAO report. The government claimed that the survey report by the UN agency involved eight questions and a sample of 3,000 respondents.

It argued that data was collected from a minuscule section of a large country, adding that it was wrong, unethical and biased. The government had totally denounced India's ranking of 111 among 125 countries on the Global Hunger Index.

It alleged that the ranking was an "erroneous measure of hunger with serious methodological issues" which showed "a malafide intent", Telegraph quoted a statement.

However, the non-governmental organisation Right to Food Campaign says that the UN report that 1.043 billion people in India could not afford a healthy diet aligns with their own estimate that more than a billion people are hungry.