Last week, Abhijit Banerjee, an Indian-born economist, became one of three joint winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on alleviating poverty. The news was reported by the Indian media with much pride, as Banerjee was only the second Indian-born economist honored with a Nobel. Twenty years earlier, Amartya Sen was rewarded for his work on the same subject: Fighting poverty and famine. A few days later, while Banerjee’s achievement was still being celebrated and he was pursued for interviews by every Indian media outlet, a report from Ireland noted that India had slipped to position 102 on a list of 117 countries on the Global Hunger List. Humiliatingly for country with what is often touted as the world’s fastest-growing major economy, India, with a score of 30.3, found itself rated worse even than civil war-afflicted African countries such as Mali (24.2), Nigeria (27.2), Burkina Faso (25.8) and Niger (30.2). All of India’s neighbors, other than Afghanistan, were rated much higher, with Sri Lanka (17.8) leading the pack of South Asian nations. According to the index, India has been consistently slipping in the global rankings since 2014, when it was ranked 55th in a smaller sampling of 76 nations. In 2017, Pakistan was ranked behind India; two years later, India has ceded its position to its neighbor. Certainly, India has made progress in addressing some of the parameters of hunger and malnutrition. For instance, its overall score has consistently improved since 2005 from 38.9 to 30.3. Fairly good progress has also been made in reducing the prevalence of stunting (below-average growth) in children from 54.2 in 2000 to 37.9 now, while the proportion of undernourishment has gone from 22.2 in 2010 to 14.5 now. However, the most worrying aspect of the 2019 report is that wasting, or acute malnourishment, has increased sharply since 2014, when it affected 16.5 percent of children, and now affects 20.8 percent. Malnourishment has long been an issue in India, even before independence, when famines were not so rare. In the past four decades, India has made sizable advances in addressing this problem through the reorganization of the public distribution system to ensure that every family receives a set minimum amount of food each week. The free or heavily subsidized food-distribution system was strengthened in 2006 with the launch of the particularly impressive Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which guaranteed at least 100 days of work each year to every adult or, if no jobs are available, that the government will pay the equivalent of the wages. In the first year of the scheme, more than 21 million households benefited. The numbers rose sharply each year for the next five years, in 2011 reaching 55 million: almost half of the country. The scheme is credited as one of the key factors in the economic development of the rural poor in India. A recent UN Development Program report noted that more than 270 million Indians were lifted out of poverty between 2005 and 2015. The benefits of MGNREGA spread far beyond impoverished villages. With a guaranteed income to rely on, the rural spend on a variety of items other than food — including household goods, consumer items, electronics and vehicles — boomed. This was one of the biggest contributors to a jump in India’s GDP growth rate, which quickly approached 9 percent a year. Not surprisingly, MGNREGA features prominently in leading business and economics schools as a case study of how a government can use policy interventions not only to fight malnutrition, but also poverty and inequality. It is also credited with securing a second term for the Congress party, which enjoyed a comfortable victory in the 2009 elections. Unfortunately for the poor in particular, and the Indian economy in general, the change of government after the 2014 elections brought with it drastic cuts to MGNREGA. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stridently campaigned against the scheme, describing it as a colossal waste of public finances and prone to corruption. Despite strong advice and words of caution from Nobel-winning economist Sen, the government virtually disbanded the scheme soon after being sworn in. Another big blow for the poor in India came in the form of demonetization in 2016, when the government withdrew the notes in circulation and replaced them with new ones. The exercise was so poorly planned and executed that it shaved more than 2.5 percent off GDP growth. Hundreds of millions of people in the unorganized sector (accounting for almost 80 percent of the national economy) found themselves out of work as their employers no longer had cash to buy anything or pay salaries. It took the banks more than a year to start functioning normally again and restore the ability to dispense cash from ATMs. The botched exercise was heavily criticized by many leading economists, including Sen and Banerjee, who called it a monumental mistake with long-lasting repercussions. Barely a year later, the government delivered another shock to the economy, this time through the hasty introduction of a new tax code that was supposed to make it easier to do business in India. Instead, a terrible implementation process sent GDP growth crashing. If only the government had consulted leading economists, in particular the two Nobel winners, about its economic policies, the Indian growth story over the past four years would have been totally different. Instead, the country finds itself faced with a GDP growth rate that has fallen from nearly 10 percent to just 5 percent. Even now, though, it might not be too late for the Modi government to start heeding the advice of economists. Banerjee has warned that the current malaise could extend long into the future, and recommended urgent and significant rises in wages under the MGNREGA scheme. He also advised that the frequent interference by the all-powerful office of the prime minister, which seems to be the place where all decisions are made these days, should be curbed. Will the prime minister listen? Ranvir S. Nayar is the editor of Media India Group, a global platform based in Europe and India that encompasses publishing, communication and consultation services.