NEW DELHI: Lashing out at the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government for price rise and spread of hunger and malnutrition in the country during the past five years, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Monday said data now showed that India was the "hunger capital of the world." "The aam aadmi has suffered the most under the UPA government. Food insecurity is growing and endemic hunger continues to afflict a large population. A U.N. body ranks India 66 out of the 88 developing countries; it details the fact that the country has become the hunger capital of the world," Polit Bureau member and MP Brinda Karat said, releasing the party's first campaign booklet on issues for the Lok Sabha elections. The booklet entitled, "Price Rise, Hunger, Malnutrition: Congress-led Government's Gift to Aam Aadmi," is the first of the 15 booklets and folders the party will publish to highlight the issues the party will be focusing during the campaign. She said the prices of common food articles such as dal, rice, sugar and onions rose by 25 to 40 per cent in Delhi alone. "All this makes the slogan of Jai Ho sound hollow." The party said the obvious strategy to tackle hunger and malnutrition was to universalise and strengthen the public distribution system, expand the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, act firmly against boarders and black marketers and ban futures trading in essential items, but the UPA government did the opposite through its "ill-cowed neo-liberal food poky which favoured agri-business and private traders." At a time when the granaries were overflowing with surplus stock holding 84 per cent above buffer norms, Ms. Karat said the government slashed allocation of foodgrains to the States by 325 lakh tonnes between 2006 and 2008.