THE Modi government’s attempt to “explain” away India’s slipping from being 94th on the world hunger index in 2020 to 101st in 2021, a rank well below that of neighbours Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh, by questioning the “methodology” of the index, is jejune enough; but even more shocking is its total inability to see the reason behind the acute hunger in the country.Precisely when India has been slipping on the hunger index, the country has had more foodgrain stocks than are required by it according to official “norms”; in fact on September 1, 2021, the FCI had 50.2 million tonnes of foodgr