Global Hunger Index 2026: India 100th, Child Wasting Near 19 Percent

India ranked 100th of 122 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2026, with a score of 24.1 that places the country in the serious category. The report was released on October 14, 2026, ahead of World Food Day, under the theme "No Security Without Food Security".

The sharpest finding is child wasting. Nearly 19 percent of children under five in India are wasted, a rate reported as the highest in South Asia. Wasting means low weight for height. It points to acute malnutrition, the kind that can rise and fall quickly with illness, food shortages and gaps in care.

The other indicators show a slower and more mixed picture. Undernourishment affects 9.8 percent of the population. Child stunting stands at 29.3 percent of children under five. Under-five mortality is 2.7 percent. Stunting means low height for age. It points to chronic undernutrition over a longer period.

Two kinds of hunger moving at different speeds

That split between wasting and stunting is the core of the India story. Chronic measures have improved over time, while acute malnutrition has stayed high. Stunting has fallen from about 50 percent in 2000 to 29.3 percent in the new report. The change is large, but it still leaves close to three in ten young children shorter than they should be for their age.

India's overall score has also improved, from 37.0 in 2006 to 25.8 in 2018 and 24.1 in 2026. The report notes that the pace of improvement has slowed. India was 102nd of 123 countries in the 2025 index, so the rank rose by two places this year, even as the score remained in the serious range.

How the index works and how the region compares

The index is published by Welthungerhilfe, Concern Worldwide and Helvetas with the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict. It scores countries on four indicators: undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and under-five mortality.

In the region, Nepal ranked 72nd with a score of 14.5, and Bangladesh ranked 84th with 19.2. Pakistan ranked 106th with 25.5, while Afghanistan scored 28.6. The global score is 18.1, better than India's 24.1. The report says hunger worsened in 32 countries since 2018, and about 57 countries are projected to miss the low hunger threshold by 2030 on current trends.

Why it matters

For India, the numbers raise a practical question for health and nutrition programs. Long-term gains against stunting show that sustained work can move a hard indicator. Persistently high wasting suggests a different problem, one tied to recent illness, feeding in the first years of life, and how quickly families can reach treatment when a child loses weight.

The measure itself is also disputed. In past years, the Indian government has rejected the index's methodology. It has argued that measures such as stunting and child mortality reflect sanitation and health factors and not hunger alone, and it has cited its own Poshan Tracker data. That is the standing dispute over the index, presented in past years. The new report does not by itself settle it.

What happens next

What happens next will depend on whether wasting can be brought down at the same pace that stunting has fallen over the past two decades. The next editions of the index will show if the overall score moves faster than the slow improvement from 25.8 in 2018 to 24.1 in 2026. For now, India has moved up two places in rank, but it remains in the serious category, with acute child malnutrition as the clearest warning in the data.