India is home to the largest number of hungry people in the world, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.
According to the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report, India is home to 23.3 crore (233 million) hungry people, the Minister of State for Planning S B Mookherjee said in a written reply to the Upper House of Parliament.
The number of hungry people in the Sub-Saharan Africa is more than 18.3 crore (183 million) and that in China is 11.9 crore (119 million).
The rest of East Asia has 7.4 crore (74 million) hungry people, Latin America 5.5 crore (55 million) and the Arab states 3.2 crore (32 million).
"In South Asia one person in every four goes hungry, and in the Sub-Saharan Africa this share is as high as one in three," he said.
Mookherjee said the UNDP's HDRD 2003, however, recognises that poverty has been dramatically reduced in India.
"It has commended India for making serious efforts towards achieving economic growth and reduction of poverty, which would contribute significantly, in turn, to fulfilling the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in the world by 2015," he added.
Minister of State for Food and Public Distribution V Sreenivasa Prasad said action has been initiated to ensure food security for all and to reform and improve the public distribution system for the benefit of the poorest of the poor in rural and urban areas.
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