What does it say about politicians and political parties of a democracy when an ‘authoritarian regime’ does better on tackling hunger?

Between 2007 and 2017, China brought down prevalence of hunger to improve its ranking from 47 to 29 among 119 countries on the Global Hunger Index. In the very period, India’s ranking slid from 94 to 100.

On the face of it, rankings are about how well or how poorly an entity does as compared to others. In 2007, India at 94/119 was trailing 93 countries. In 2017, India is trailing 99 countries. What illustrates this better is the performance of others.