TOPIC 1-GDP growth rate-is it a real growth indicator?

GDP is the sum of consumer spending, business spending, government

spending and total exports minus total imports. To measure its
effectiveness as a measure to describe an economy's indicator, one must
look both at its advantages and disadvantages and also the possible
alternatives.
Advantages:
Using GDP as a measure of a nation's economy makes sense because it's
essentially a measure of how much buying power a nation has over a given
time period. GDP is also used as an indicator of a nation's overall standard
of living because, generally, a nation's standard of living increases as GDP
increases.

Disadvantages:
1. It doesn't count unpaid volunteer work.
2. Wartime disaster increase the GDP of the country.
3. It doesn't show the distribution of income among different people.
4. It doesn't show whether people belonging to a country having high GDP
are happy or not.
5. It does not account for quality of goods.

If you measure India's GDP, it is the 10th richest country but this measure
also does not take into account the purchasing power of people. By
measuring GDP with respect to purchasing power parity, India becomes the
3rd richest in the world.
But then again, this measure has its drawbacks. One can't say for sure what
all goods should be included to calculate it.
Human Development Index that can be used to measure economic
progress. It uses statistics like life expectancy, education and income levels
to measure a country's progress but then again it has its drawbacks like
failure to include any ecological considerations, lack of consideration of
technological development or contributions to the human civilization,
focusing exclusively on national performance and ranking, lack of attention
to development from a global perspective, measurement error of the
underlying statistics, and on the UNDP's changes in formula which can lead
to severe misclassification in the categorisation of 'low', 'medium', 'high' or
'very high' human development countries.
Bhutan uses yet another measure as an indicator. It is the Gross happiness
Index which measures the happiness level of people in an economy. As
cheesy as it might sound, it is very difficult to calculate something as
qualitative as happiness.
That leaves us with just one measure i.e. GDP.
Even though we are all well aware of its shortcomings, we don't really have
a choice simply because it is the only thing that can be precisely calculated
and can be used as a measure to compare economic progress of various
countries.
 TOPIC 2-BRAND AND LIVES
All the things starting from a needle to luxurious cars. Everything is
surrounded by BRAND.
And we are tempted towards them. It's human nature! When we see an
apple phone we get attracted but on the other hand having a one
plus/samsung is not a big thing.
Even we describe, rather judge a person by the brands he/she follows. If
she has a prada bag then she's rich but having a lavie means a middle-
class family and if non-branded then definitely from a poor family.

Yes! Brands do rule our lives:-

 We always prefer to purchase branded products because; we have an
intuition that they are the best.
 Many of the youngsters prefer to go for branded products because they
take it as their style statement.
 The elite customers never go for any other option rather than going for
the branded ones only.
 Brands endorse their products by the help of celebrities & other
influential people to attract the customers by targeting their sentimental
inclinations towards the aforesaid personalities.
 Brands are playing a very important role in the lives of individuals as it
indicates their taste & status symbol.
No! Brands don’t rule our lives:-
 A common man never prefers the brand; rather it prefers the quality and
the value of its money. Thus it goes for the economic products belonging
from each variant.
 As far as the buying behavior of the common man is concerned, they
remain inclined about having a cheaper variant of every product variant
with a good quality which can last for a longer period of time by satisfying
its immediate requirements.
 The common buyers who belong from the middle class or upper middle
class of our society never go for the branded products with high price tag,
they rather go for the less endorsed or less known brands for getting the
same product at a lower price range.
 The common buyers never prefer to go for high priced or elite brands
because their pocket never allows them to do so, thus they go for the less
known ones.
 The brands had never mesmerized the common people by their high
budget promotional drives, because they prefer to have good food rather
spending on good brands or elite brands.

Conclusion:-
As per the discussion above, it can be concluded that the brands have their
own place in the market as well as in the conscience of the people; so we can
say that brands partially rule our lives because the inclination and preference
towards them (brands) differs from person to person.