DRAVI KANTHG Geneva, 18 September As the world's absolute hunger threshold (or absolute poverty of less than $1.25 a day) rose to 923 million last year due to rising food prices, India accounted for a lion's share of over 231 million, according to the latest figures released by the United Nations food and agriculture agency yesterday. At a time when the global financial tsunami is leaving the countries in the rich world in a shambles, the misery of the poorest of the poor is showing no signs of decline in developing countries, especially India. In sharp contrast, China's hunger level remained at around half of the Indian threshold, suggesting that the economic growth in India has not really percolated down to the poorest of the poor. "In India, despite rapid economic growth, the number of hungry people increased by 20 million compared with the baseline period (2003-05)," the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) observed its largest briefing paper entitled "Hunger on the Rise." Together, China and India alone account for over 42 per cent (231 million in India and. 123 million in China) of the chronically hungry people in the developing world. The life expectancy in India has gone up by four years - from 59 to 63 - since 1990-92, a development that impacted the overall change in population structure. Consequently, the growth in minimum energy requirements had outpaced that of dietary energy supply. Significantly, China performed impressively by registering a steady reduction in undernourishment, with a 31 per cent drop in the number of undernourished from 178 million in 1990-92 to 123 million in 2003-05. This shows that the Manmohan Singh government has not sufficiently addressed crucial issues to ensure higher penetration of the economic growth in reducing absolute poverty, analysts said adding the government would have to confront this reality in the up coming elections. Meanwhile, the FAO said rising food prices last year have further exacerbated those already caught in the absolute poverty trap and added 75 million more people below the hunger threshold, taking the estimated number of undernourished people worldwide to 923 million. "T'he achievement of the World Food Summit's goal of halving the number of hungry people is even more remote," it noted. FAO, which estimated the number of people suffering from chronic hunger around 848 million people three years ago, has called for a concerted step to be taken globally. "The devastating effects of high food prices on the number of hungry people compound the already worrisome long-term trends," said a senior FAO official.