🪖 Operation Ajay:

• India launches "Operation Ajay" to bring home citizens from Israel.

• This will be the second evacuation this year, after "Operation Kaveri" that brought back several thousand Indian citizens from conflict-torn Sudan in April-May.

🍲 Global Hunger Index 2023:

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, reflecting multiple dimensions of hunger over time.

• The GHI is intended to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger, provide a way to compare levels of hunger between countries and regions, and call attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where the need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger is greatest.

• India ranks 111 out of a total of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023, with its progress against hunger nearly halted since 2015, reflecting a global trend.

• The Union government, though, contested India’s performance for the third year in a row, citing flawed methodology.

• Afghanistan, Haiti and 12 sub-Saharan countries perform worse than India on the GHI.

• India’s ranking is based on a Global Hunger Index score of 28.7 on a 100-point scale where 0 is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst. This categorises India’s severity of hunger as “serious”.

• While India made significant strides between 2000 and 2015, with its score improving from 38.4 in 2000 to 35.5 in 2008 and 29.2 in 2015, over the past eight years, the country has advanced on the GHI by only 0.5 points.

• The 2000, 2008 and 2015 GHI scores are the only data that can be used for valid comparisons over time.

• India’s performance mirrors a global trend. The 2023 GHI score for the world is 18.3, which is considered moderate. However, it is only one point below the world’s 2015 GHI score of 19.1.

• South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara are the world regions with the highest hunger levels, with GHI scores of 27.0 each, indicating serious hunger.

• West Asia and North Africa is the region with the third-highest hunger level with a score of 11.9 indicating “moderate” hunger level.

• Latin American and the Caribbean is the only region in the world whose GHI scores have worsened between 2015 and 2023.

• East and Southeast Asia, dominated by populous China, has the second-lowest 2023 GHI score of any region in the report. China, for example, is among the top 20 countries that each have a GHI score of less than 5.

• The region with the lowest 2023 GHI score is Europe and Central Asia, whose score of 6.0 is considered “low”.

□ Methodology:

• The GHI score is based on a formula which combines four indicators that together capture the multi-dimensional nature of hunger, including under-nourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality.

○ Undernourishment: The share of the population whose caloric intake is insufficient.

○ Child stunting: The share of children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.

○ Child wasting: The share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition.

○ Child mortality: The share of children who die before their fifth birthday, reflecting in part the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.