Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, with a programme that looks

at the numbers in every corner of the globe and this week we're looking at India.

Loyal listener Ahish Shah recently spotted two claims in the UK publication The London

Review of Books in an article written by the author, Pankaj Mishra.

The number of Indians who go to sleep hungry rose from 190 million in 2018 to 350 million

in 2022 and malnutrition and malnourishment killed more than two thirds of the children

who died on the age of five last year.

Ahish has high brow listening tastes as well as high brow reading tastes so he contacted

us on more or less at bbc.co.uk asking us to look into these claims.

We turn to Rukhmi S, an Indian data journalist and author of whole numbers and half truths

what data can and cannot tell us about modern India.

I started by asking her about the first claim that hunger had risen from 190 million in

2018 to 350 million in 2022.

Where did the evidence for this claim come from?

The closest source that we have for that is a piece of litigation that was filed in India's

highest courts that the litigation was asking for better community kitchens.

It has been poorly reported even in the Indian media and that number was ascribed to the

government while it actually came from the petition itself.

But the petitioners have not ported any source.

Okay so somebody was petitioning the court.

They included this number in their petition and we have no idea where they got it from.

That's right and it's been poorly reported in the media.

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