What’s eat right India?

What’s eat right India initiative?

It is a government initiative to enable citizens to eat healthy and eat safe. The supply and demand side stakeholders are brought together to make sure India consumes healthy food. It is part of the “Swasth Bharat” initiative.

Why?

Prompt citizens to look beyond Ads

In the supply driven market run through smart marketing campaigns, the consumer is at receiving end where un-healthy food is pushed to him through glitzy ads and marketing campaigns.

Eg: Many sportspersons (people associate sports with health) feature in drinks advertisements whereas the drink may be just sugar+color+soda+secret recipes! The young generation would be enticed to use these products (assuming it is healthy through the pictures and depictions in ads). These myths are broken by the eat right India initiative.

Making person understand his health needs

The nutritional needs are explained, quizzes programs done for health awareness of the citizens. Videos of eat health champions are popularized to encourage healthy diet. The National institute of nutrition learnings are transmitted to people for taking healthy decisions.

Eat right awards

To brands and companies that produce healthy products.

Eat right India (Internal link - old article)

Monetory Vs Fiscal Policy of Government

The Government can regulate the economy through monetary and fiscal policies. 

Monetary Policy

The supply of money is controlled by Government through monetary policy. The monetary policies are generally done by the central banks ( RBI in India). The interest rates and circulation of money is controlled by the central banks through monetary policy. 

The central banks according to the macro economic situation take stance needed for the nation. At times, the priority may be inflation control and at times, the priority may be growth. 

eg: The higher interest rate will reduce the money in circulation and bring down inflation. At the same time, the growth may reduce. 

Fiscal Policy 

The composition of spending and amount of spending showcases areas where the government wants to spend money. The fiscal policies is the way govt spends money according to its priorities. 

The taxes government imposes and the incentives given for various sectors highlight the way government wants to spend money. If there is slowing of economy, the government may decide to spend more to stimulate economy. Eg: - Heavy investments in infrastructure will improve employment, push more money to core sectors, which in-turn may stimulate growth. 

Real vs Nominal Interest rate

Real vs Nominal Interest rate

Real interest rate is the interest rate which takes inflation into consideration. To get the real interest you would need inflation rate and nominal interest rate.

Eg:

A person borrows Rs 1,00,000 as loan for building house from SBI with one year as loan period. Assume rate of interest is 10% (which is the nominal interest rate). If the inflation during the period is 6 percentage. Then, the real interest rate is 4 percentage.

The concept of real vs nominal is very basic to understanding the way money works with time. You may be seeing offers where NCDs offer 10 percentage or above interest on the deposits. What really matters would be real interest (real growth) which would be arrived after deducting tax, inflation , processing fees etc.