Saturday, January 11, 2014

Coke-ism

Sometime ago, i asked a friend of mine why do you drink Coke.He replied he drank it for easy digestion. i asked this question to couple of people and all of them gave such erratic answers. The real answer is nobody knows why there are gulping down this beverage. 

When Coke became popular in india a decade back, it was seen as an aspirational product.Now, it has become daily part of our lives.It has become part of our grocery list today. I often see people buying a couple of big coke bottles in their shopping buckets in super markets.Any 2 rs discount and these people buy couple of 2 litre bottles.

This habit is now passed on to next generation with every fridge in urban areas containing Coke.Some websites say that the main ingredient in Coca-Cola is phosphoric acid, which can dissolve a nail in four days. This alone causes eroding of the stomach lining, infiltrates bodily fluids, takes out calcium from the bones, changes the alkaline-acid balance of the kidneys and damages the liver.
Not to mention, Child obesity is attributed to soda intake.

The below picture depicts how much sugar cubes a bottle of coke contains



The below video from Coke senior executive talks about high sugar levels in coke
NEWSNIGHT: Paxman shows Coca Cola boss how much... 

As far as my home is concerned, we strictly follow the policy of not at all buying soft beverages of any kind . Only , Narasu's coffee is allowed :)

You can find another related article here

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

When India dominated the world

Year 2014 has born and let's take a look into the indian economy during the last 2000 years.

Before plunging into the economics, let's try to understand Gross Domestic Product in simpler terms.


GDP (Y) is a sum of Consumption (C), Investment (I), Government Spending (G) and Net Exports (X – M).
Y = C + I + G + (X − M)
X represents Exports and M represents imports.
The following estimates are taken from the 2007 monograph "Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD" by the British economist Angus Maddison. This report was accepted by OECD , an organisation which contains mostly developed countries as its members.

GDP (PPP) in millions of 1990 International Dollars
Year
1
1000
1500
1600
1700
1820
1870
1913
1950
1973
2003
26,820
26,550
61k
96k
82k
228k
189,740
241k
244k
739k
6,187k
33,750
33,750
60k
74k
90k
111k
134,882
204k
222k
494k
2,267k
105,402
120,379
248k
331k
371k
694k
1,110,951
2,733k
5,331k
16,022k
40,913k
India,as  % of world GDP
32
28
24
22
24
16
12
7
4
3
6
China , % of world GDP
25
22
25
29
22
33
17
9
5
5
15










As you can see from the table, india dominated the world from 1 A.D to 1700 A.D. except during 1600 A.D.  India and China totally accounted for 50% of world GDP for 1700 years.
The start of industrial revolution in Europe and the subsequent colonization of the Asian giants crippled their economies in last 3 centuries.



The report further adds that GDP of  mighty Roman empire which ruled around 14 A.D. was  less than that of India and china.

25 years ago, Chinese GDP was 3.81 % of world GDP while indian GDP was 3.08%. Today, china's share of world GDP is around 14% while indian share is meagre 5.5%.

The Chinese dragon has bounced leaps and bounds while the Indian elephant has just now woke up from its deep slumber.It seems the wheels of indian democracy are moving slowly but surely.