Jharkhand at bottom of SDG hunger index

RANCHI: Jharkhand is among the three worst-performing states along with Bihar and Assam in this year’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) index released by Niti Aayog on Thursday. In terms of hunger reduction, the state fared at the bottom of all 28 states.
While the state government is yet to issue any formal reaction to the report, the ruling Congress party has rejected the ratings.
State finance minister Rameshwar Oraon, who also holds the food and civil supplies portfolio, could not be reached for comments, spokesperson of his party, Alok Dubey said, “We are yet to go through the details, but going by the preliminary report, we do not agree to the findings. As far as the hunger situation is concerned, the state government is at the forefront since the outbreak of the pandemic to help the people like running community kitchens and distributing advance ration among others. All ruling parties of our alliance government also run separate welfare camps to ensure that no one goes hungry.”
However, Niti Aayog has put Jharkhand, with an overall score of 56, at 27th rank in the SDG, while neighbouring Bihar was in 28th position and Assam was placed just above Jharkhand. In 2019, the state’s overall score was 53. On the other hand, Kerala has retained its top slot in this year’s index.
Niti Aayog released the SDG index for the third consecutive year to evaluate the performance of the states on 16 different parameters comprising poverty, health, food security, environment protection and industry among other growth indicators.
According to the report, Jharkhand was rated on 15 parameters in which it showed progress in 10 indicators compared to 2019 but fared miserably in the remaining five.
For example, last year, the state scored 22 in the zero hunger indicator which slipped to 19 this year. Under the decent work & economic growth category, it scored 54 against 70 in 2019. In industry, innovation and infrastructure, too, the score came down to 37 from last year’s 70.
The other two parameters where it failed badly are climate action with a score of 25, two notches below year, and life on land category where its scoring fell to 71 from last year’s 99.
Siraj Datta of Jharkhand Janadhikar Manch, a conglomeration of different rights groups which works on various social issues, said the state’s poor performance towards zero hunger index doesn’t come as a surprise and the Covid-19 pandemic could be one of the reasons to have further worsen it.
“PDS, MNREGA and pensions schemes are the three important tools which can potentially address the issues of hunger. In Jharkhand, we are witnessing lots of exclusion of genuine beneficiaries in all these three sections. Ironically, the JMM-Congress-RJD government came to power raking up issues of hunger, poverty, joblessness and the likes but we are yet to see any concrete action to address those on the ground,” he remarked.
Ashrafi Nand Prasad, the convener of the Right to Food campaign, said, "Even though the state government announced green ration cards to include about 15 lakh people, who were originally left out of the National Food Security Act by linking them to the public distribution system (PDS), it is yet to be implemented in the right earnest till today."
He added, "Moreover, we have been demanding to restart distribution of eggs to anganwadis to address the issues of malnutrition among children, but is yet be to done.”