The country ranked 100th out of 119 countries on the global hunger index, slipping three positions from last year.
According to an IFPRI press release, the Union Government and HarvestPlus have signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct research on increasing the level of essential vitamins and minerals, or micronutrients in crops critical to poor people.
Dr Purnima Menon is a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute's Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division, and is based at IFPRI's Asia office in New Delhi. She conducts applied nutrition research in the South Asia region, with a focus on programs and policies to improve maternal and child nutrition.
The two decades of our "spectacular economic progress" has side-stepped vast swath of our underprivileged that oscillates between twenty per cent and one-fifth of our population!
India's extremely poor score in successive years in the global hunger index (GHI) should remind policy makers of the unfinished agenda of liberalisation.
The impact of their actions on prices is not conclusive - and overzealous regulations could add to the problem.
Few price control policies taken by the governments, including India, are likely to backfire by making the international market smaller and more volatile, a think-tank of International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has said.
Although demonetisation and improper implementation of GST along with falling prices are being blamed for much of the distress in rural India for some time, experts believe those may not be the only reason.
The fund allocated for pulses buffer is more than 40% of entire farm ministry's 2016-17 budget.
Officials said good rain in August - though it might not improve acreages much for most crops except urad, moong, and paddy - would help in improving yields in the crops already planted.
The irony of this scheme to benefit farmers is that it could add to the problems for the government because the mechanism to procure and store crops like pulses, coarse cereals and oilseeds barely exists.
Though hunger levels are not alarming in India, it still fares badly, lagging behind Nepal and Sri Lanka on the Global Hunger Index.
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