ET Graphics: India is winning the battle against hunger, but not food costs
A newly released UN report shows India's share of undernourished people has more than halved over roughly two decades, falling from about 21.1% in 2004-06 to 9.8% in 2023-25.
In absolute numbers, this is a decline of roughly 101 million undernourished people, from about 243.9 million to 142.5 million.
Despite this progress, the report finds that 42.9% of India's population in 2024 still could not afford a healthy diet.
The cost of a healthy diet in India rose from $2.77 (in purchasing power parity terms) per person per day in 2017 to $4.07 in 2024 — an increase of close to 47% over seven years.
India's decline in undernourishment is reported to have outpaced the global average decline over the same period, even as diet affordability worsened.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) Report
SOFI is an annual flagship report jointly prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) along with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). It tracks global progress against Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) using standardised indicators.
Key Details
- Key metrics tracked include the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU), the Prevalence of Moderate or Severe Food Insecurity, child stunting/wasting rates, and the cost and affordability of a healthy diet.
- The "cost of a healthy diet" indicator is expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, allowing cross-country comparison independent of exchange-rate distortions.
- The report is one of the primary global data sources used to monitor SDG 2 (End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition, Promote Sustainable Agriculture), part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted in 2015.
The India-specific undernourishment and diet-affordability figures cited are drawn directly from this year's SOFI report, making it a key data source for both prelims-style "report and publishing body" questions and mains answers on food security governance.
Undernourishment vs. Food Affordability — Two Distinct Metrics
Undernourishment (measured via the Prevalence of Undernourishment) captures whether average dietary energy intake falls below a minimum threshold, whereas diet-cost affordability measures whether a population can financially access a nutritionally adequate (not just calorie-sufficient) diet. A country can improve on the first while worsening on the second, which is exactly the pattern reported for India.
Key Details
- Undernourishment estimates use per-capita food supply data combined with the distribution of dietary energy consumption within a population, benchmarked against minimum dietary energy requirements.
- A "healthy diet" cost benchmark, by contrast, is built from the cheapest locally available combination of foods that meets national dietary guidelines across food groups (not just calories) — so it also captures the affordability of dietary diversity (proteins, fruits, vegetables), not just staple-grain sufficiency.
- Rising healthy-diet costs typically reflect food inflation, especially in perishable and protein-rich food groups (pulses, edible oils, vegetables, dairy), which tend to be more volatile than staple cereal prices.
India's calorie-based undernourishment has fallen sharply — partly attributable to decades of public distribution and staple-cereal subsidisation — while the cost of a nutritionally balanced diet has risen faster than incomes for a large share of the population, showing why India can simultaneously "win" on hunger metrics and "lose" on diet-cost metrics.
India's Food Security Architecture
India's food security framework rests primarily on the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA), which gives roughly two-thirds of the population a legal entitlement to subsidised food grain through the Public Distribution System (PDS), supplemented by nutrition-focused schemes.
Key Details
- NFSA 2013 entitles priority households to 5 kg of food grain per person per month (and Antyodaya households to 35 kg per household per month) at highly subsidised prices, and mandates maternity benefits and nutrition support for children and pregnant/lactating women.
- Since January 2023, foodgrain under NFSA has been provided free of cost under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) framework, extended in phases.
- Complementary nutrition schemes include the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)/Poshan Abhiyaan (targeting child stunting and wasting) and the mid-day meal scheme (PM POSHAN), aimed at both calorie sufficiency and dietary diversity.
- These calorie/staple-focused interventions explain much of the undernourishment decline, but do not directly subsidise the more expensive non-staple food groups (proteins, fruits, vegetables) that drive the "healthy diet" cost.
The gap between India's strong performance on undernourishment and its weak performance on diet affordability is a direct outcome of a food security architecture historically built around staple-grain calorie sufficiency rather than dietary diversity — a distinction increasingly cited in mains answers on the "hidden hunger"/malnutrition debate.
- India's undernourishment prevalence: fell from about 21.1% (2004-06) to 9.8% (2023-25)
- Absolute decline in undernourished persons: roughly 101 million (from about 243.9 million to 142.5 million)
- Share of India's population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024: 42.9%
- Cost of a healthy diet in India: rose from $2.77 PPP/person/day (2017) to $4.07 PPP/person/day (2024)
- Report source: State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), jointly published by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO
- Related legal framework: National Food Security Act, 2013, covering about two-thirds of India's population through the PDS