Go for Insurance

I had been thinking for last few weeks on which insurance policy to consider, which would give me an insurance coverage, tax benefit and investment in the same order. After going through various reviews, Q&A sections, blogs etc. Following things evolved ULIP, Insurance Tax schemes and Term policy. Then further investigation on them made certain things more clear to me, which I would like to share in this blog.
Let me explain the scheme's nature briefly one after the other in simple ways:
Term Insurance: One would pay a fixed premium for certain duration ( 5/10/15/20/25/30/35 years ) on regular basis or single (one time lump sum), until this duration he/she would be covered from insurance. There is no survival benefit under this scheme, means if you survive the term period you get nothing. This is purely a risk protection scheme. Here the premium paid would depend on your age and term.
Insurance schemes: One would pay a fixed premium for certain duration ( 5/10/15/20/25 years ) on regular basis or single (one time lump sum), until this duration he/she would be covered from insurance. In case of death one's nominee receives sum assured + interest accrued. On survival one would get sum assured + interest accrued. In such schemes the premium paid would be much higher than the Term insurance for the same insured amount. Here the return on investment as a survival benefit would also be lower compared to investment in funds therefore risk free.
ULIP: One would pay a fixed premium for certain duration ( 5/10/15/20/25 years ) on regular basis or single (one time lump sum), until this duration he/she would be covered from insurance. In case of death one's nominee receives sum assured or fund value, which ever is higher. ( Fund value because certain amount from premium would be used in investing in market). In ULIP plan, part of the premium would be covered for insurance and other part for investment in markets and another part is paid for admin charges ( fund management, broker commission, mortality charges ). Premium would be much higher compared to Term insurance for the same insured amount. Return on investment on survival could be better than Insurance schemes because markets returns could be higher.
Amongst these, the best one could be an Term Insurance + Investment into ELSS or PPF or FD according to your convenience. This accumulated amount ( Term insurance premium + investment into ELSS or PPF or FD ) can be lesser than the premium paid for ULIP ( since no admin charges) for the same or better benefits considering both case of death and survival. Consider the example given in the link here <http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=280394>.
Disclaimer: I am neither an financial analyst nor finance student the above writing is based on my understanding after reading few reviews, blogs and Q & A sessions at rediff. Comments are appreciated.

Mandatory Military Service

A country's potential is determined by its strength in defense and strong economy. Having said this as an individual citizen how can one contribute to his country's needs, one best way of initiating this via government is to introduce One Year Mandatory Military Service to its citizen in the age group 18-23. This practice is already existing in few countries like Germany. Should not such practice be introduced in India as well?
Such Military service program should not only be associated with the training activities like making physical fit, drill, discipline, weapon training. But also educate its candidate in Civil, Judiciary and Political science of the nation. Though these subjects are taught in primary school level, which is totally filtered out by the time an person start taking his competitive exams. These knowledge is totally lacking in people, for lets say how many of you know your National Duties. Large number of people are not aware of the Laws that need to be known for any legal actions and not many are aware of the constitution.
Teaching such subjects to an individual would create more awareness in the society and one will be in a better position to understand current affairs. Or will also appreciate any new policy/bill that is proposed in the Parliament and will be in better position to draw conclusions.
A country is also benefited by such a program, where it gets a huge young resource to fight in crisis like natural calamities or national unrest. It is also likely that many would like the career in defense and would pursue their career further in this field.
Such program is a win-win situation where both country and an individual citizen enjoys benefit of growth. Hence should be entertained and brought up in to action as quickly as possible.

Blogging Unclogged

There are so many blogs in the internet. Are all these bloggings quite active? I am sure they are not. There can be many reasons for this, but I will give only my reasons why I had been in abeyance in bloggings. Now let me take the oppurtunity to blogg on why my blogging was clogged. Motivation is required in order to begin or continue the task that you are working on and this motivation should not be ephemeral.
Let me begin with how it started in my case. The motivation for me to start the blogging was because of attending an Toast Master session where a colleague of mine gave an informative speech about the Blogging. This session was quite inspiring to motivate me to start the blogging, though I started to blogg quite late after that session. Subsequently certain unforgettable events in my life motivated me to write bloggs on them. Like my first onsite visit, getting a car and so on. Off-late there has been no such events ( unforgettable one, not the ones that I surely want to forget) which has motivated me to write bloggs.
Now the question arise for what this blogg is attributed to? In my words what was the motivation? Many of my friends asked to me about my blogging status, now this can really trigger to awake me up from hibernate and write some thing to displease those who are willing to read. This blog is just to unclogg the blogging flow of "Karthru Karma and Kriya". Atleast I wanted to be known as an active blogger.

Conquering Brahmagiri

After conquering Mullayanagiri in ChickMangalore, I thought its time to conquer the Brahmagiri towards southern Karnataka. The battalion was of eight people: abhi, chand, maski, shas, java, shetiya, vp and kg. The target was to conquer the Brahmagiri peak, the challenges were Rain, Leeches.
The game plan was well prepared, like the booking of the Guest house at narimalai, KSRTC ticket bookings, and assigments of the tasks.
The battle started from 03/11/2006 23:05 by boarding an Rajahamsa bus to Kutta from Majestic. We were supposed to get down at Srimangala. We reached Srimangala exactly 04/11/2006 05:30 hrs, this place was not new to many of us. Most of us had been here before when we had conquered the beauty of Kerala around 5 years agoand it was Nostalgia for us. Amazingly chand and maski remembered the tree infront of the IB in Srimangala. The next task was to find a place to get refreshed, we remebered the same old IB for that. Hence we requested the cartaker of IB to get let us stay in IB for few hours and get refreshed. It all went fine and we got rooms. The battalion took rest and got refreshed. We came to know that the bus to Iruppu is at 08:30 hrs, so our job was to get the permission letter from Range Officier as per my previous discussion with him and get few items at Srimangala and leave to Iruppu after having breakfast. All went fine as expected, above all we got our weapons to fight leeches the "Snuf Powder" and "Coconut Oil".
We reached Iruppu by 10:00 hrs. We met our guide Mohan, who warned us about the leeches. But he was n't aware that we were all set for that. All of us excluding daring abhi and maski applied the paste of snuf powder and oil to our legs. We started the trek at 11:00 after 300 meters of trek when the Leeches started to attack. The daring guys realised that its time for them to get back and equip against the leeches. Apparently 6 of us went back and applied the paste, and hence forth our battle started at 12:00 hrs 04/11/2006. On our way we were attacked by hundreds of leeches but all their efforts went in vain. On our way we saw the footprints of the Elephants and Mohan told that the elephants must be some where close by and hence we should not make noise. We all wanted to see the wild elephants but could not, we only saw its dung and foot prints which is captured in VP's camera. Without much of diffculty we reached narimalai guest house at 15:00 hrs.
The guest house was fairly decent, with solar lights, utensils, cots, chairs and also with rats. We had rotis and chapathis for our lunch, then our next objective was to get water and wood(as fuel) to prepare the dinner. abhi and me went to fetch water from the near by stream, and vp, maski and chand went to get the wood next. This was not a simple tasks as we had to escape for the leeches while acheiving our objective. our target was to get this done by 17:00 hrs.
We got all the necessary things, in mean time the other group had also come, we came to know that they were 11 people initially and few dropped because of afraid of leech and the rest who came down suffered a lot of leech bites, unlike us. Where as in our group maski was least equipped ( snuf paste) and hence had 2 kisses from leeches.


Things were all set for the preparation of dinner. It was time for our chef to prove his skill, he was accompanied by chand and shas, and few of us also helped in maintaining the flame. the task was tough as the woods was wet. We prepared the dinner by 20:00 hrs, not to mention the maskis's aloo sabji was excellent. I strongly feel he should really think on chaning his profession from Software engineer to Chef.
The next few hours was crucial because few amongst us want to stop here and return empty handed without conquering the Bramhagiri peak. But I was not set to that, with the help of few others I convinced that we can reach the peak without much of the problem.
When all was fine there are one more problem the "Contradicting Java", finally the contradicting loop spiralled so much that all except Shetiya agreed to go ahead to conquer the peak.
The next morning on 05/11/2006 we were all set, surprisingly even the "Contradicting Java". Mr Chef prepared Puliogere as our breakfast, We had it and left to Brahmagiri at 09:00 hrs.
The trek till Brahmagiri was not that difficult expect the final blow. where we have to climb the steep mountain as it was slippary. We trekked all along the border of Karnataka and Kerala. We also saw the excretion of Tiger, which is captured again in vp's camera. At last we conquered the Brahmagiri peak at 10:55 hrs.

We had a great time at peak, altogehter we trekked 9 kms so far. We had cucumber and biscuits. We took snaps and also video by abhi and vp. Then it was exciting moment for few as some requests were put forth to god by chand ( the messenger) for few of the "Salim and Romeos" and also heard some story kind of that. I request all those who are reading this blogg wish that chands requests is granted by God.
We started to return back, our target was to reach Iruppu before 15:30 hrs. We reached back Narimalai guest house at 13:00 hrs. We had rotis and chapathis for our lunch. Decided to leave the place by 14:00 hrs. In between we also had to equip us to protect from the same old leeches.
We had little snuf paste, inspite it was managed for all the pair of legs.
The way back was an easier one, it took around one hour for us to reach Iruppu falls. And we were there by 15:10 hrs. Most of us wished to take bath in the Iruppu falls and then return. Hence forth we decided to miss the 15:30 bus back to Srimangala, and planned to hire a jeep to drop us at Donikoppal. From there our plan was to get the bus back to Bangalore via Mysore.

At Iruppu we had a greatest of the time in our entire expedition. We swam, took bath and also massage. This was great place, but maski was little more excited to see some other group there. And later cursed abhi (Don't ask for what reasons) for that.
After getting refreshed, we started to leave Iruppu falls to reach temple, where our jeep was ready. Now it started to rain, luckily we were all set and started to run towards temple. With some diffculty we all managed to get into Jeep. On our way to Donikoppal via Srimangala, Abhi got back his spects that he had forgotten in IB the day before. He missed the chance to get new one. but I believe chand has one, as his spects broke.
We reached Donikoppal at around 17:30, this was not so pleasant journey for few of us atleast to Java and me. As all of us bugged Java and Leech bugged me. We had snacks here and got bus to Mysore at 19:00 hrs. Reached Mysore had dinner and RRR hotel andhra style and returned to bangalore with great memories.

My New Car

After many discussions, I got my new car. The Santro Xing - Real Earth colour. Many liked the colour except my mother. In this blog I shall discuss on my decision on choosing the Santro and two drives in my car.
The following list of the car were short listed based on my requirements and budget: Santro, Wagon R, Xeta and Alto. I dint like Alto, Wagan R was elimated because of the being 4 seater and Xeta for being very new in the market. The only choice left was Santro. Apart from this, there were also few others in my company who wanted to go for Santro. So all of us decided to book a Santro. We bargained on the discount, Finaly after all haggling the Sales guy agreed to give discount for Rs 25000 :).
The new car was rode to my home, surprisingly by me. After taking driving class of 10 hrs and 2 test drives, I was dare enough to ride my new car to my home from Showroom. Just to be safe I had a friend with me. The car parking place at my home was sufficiently large to accomodate my new Car, Thanks to my Father.
Initially I practiced near my home. Once again thanks to my Father to building the house in the outskirts of bangalore, where the traffic is relatively low. In order to increase the meter reading of my car so not be ashamed while giving it to First free service, I decided to go for a drive.
With my friends I decided to go to Yediyur. Yediyur comes in Bangalore-Mangalore road. It was decided because of the famous temple and good road. My friends had a great courage to accompny me in my drive. They took all precautions of wearing seat belt. The trip was successful and surprisingly I was appreciated for my driving skills.
The trip to Yediyur made me more confident in driving. As the result my friends planned for one more drive to Mekedhatu after few weeks. This place comes after Kanakapura and around 100 kms from Bangalore. I was accompanied by 3 people this time. 50% of the road was relatively bad in this trip. But we wanted to see Mekedhatu, the place where River cauvery flows between two mountains. Since it was rainy season, it is great to watch such scenary. This trip was even more successful inspite of a minor damage to my lower portion of the right-front side of my car. Ofcourse because of the bad roads...
These two trips had been exiciting and fun. But there is also an event which does not make me happy. A minor accident on the Vijayanagar road that damaged my car's left eye. Let me not get into how it happened, as I dont want to recall/remember it. Finally after the first free service the repair is done and my car is back to its healthy looks.

My First Visit to Foreign country.

I landed on Germany-Frankfurt Airport(One of the world famous) on 23 Apr morning, the cab was waiting for me to pick up and later dropped me to the hotel in Mannheim.The average speed of the journey was 140 Km/hr, and u will not even have the feel of it. The landscape was green. It was 1 hour journey to the hotel in Mannheim.To tell a little about Mannheim, this city was completely destroyed in WW-II, but rebuilt like anything in few years, You can relate Mannheim to our Mysore/Tumkur. Sunday nothing I did, just roamed around the Mannheim city in the afternoon and evening. It was shocking to see the day light till 9.00 PM, and later from one colleague I learnt that in Norway the day light extends upto 1.00 AM, this is shocking for we Indians, who dont see daylight after 7.00 PM.
I had to take public transport to reach office, a tram, a train and a bus. so total 45 mins journey from hotel. We could have taken a hotel near by office, but things are difficult there, it is village kind with very less access to the needs.
Three days weekend was the greatest one. we took a train to Amsterdam and reached there on saturday afternoon. To say few things about the city, it got its name because of a Dam built on the river Ams. Luckily on that day People of amsterdam were celebrating the queen's birthday. People in the city were on streets with orange dress. Dancing and boosing on the streets. Marijuna, beer were sold on the streets. The city is care free kind of thing, with gals and guys dancing on the street, free drugs and so as sex. More can be said about this carnival but impatient to write. Next day we went to Madam Tussauds museum, Canal ride and Wind mill museum. About Madam Tussaud u know, and about canal ride you would have seen in movies, hence i want to tell u about the wind mill on which i rate best amongst them.The amsterdam city is much below the sea level, and in rainy season people commuted by swimming and boating. Hence sometime in 17th century 5 wind mills were built to flush the water out of the city using the Archimedes screw. Currently only one is operating (wind power) others are replaced by eletric/diesel machines. The water is collected and flushed out into sea.

The next morning we returned back to hotel. And I visted the historic city near by Mannheim namely Heidelburg, the castle city. It had biggest barrel in world. The castle was destroyed in some war in 14 century then rebuilt and also a little bit destruction happened during Worl war. There is a river that separates the city and bridges are built parallely for connection. one can have beautiful view of this river/bridges from castle and view of castle from the bridge. my long week end got over with full exhaustion and excitement.

On one of the week days, a German colleague was good enough to take to Starusburg in France. Its 2 hrs journey from our office. the city is beautiful, colourful and had a good church.

On the last week end I had only saturday to roam around so as I did. I went to black forest, the dense jungle. One has to go to Titisee to see black forest. The world famous cuckoo clock are available here.There is a lake which will be frozen in winter for ppl to ski and watery in summer for boating.

Investor, Innovator and Income Seeker in India

Current India, the nation which is attracting the Investors who are small, medium and big. The nation which provides opportunity to the Innovator and just livelihood to Income seeker.
It is the choice that one has to make on which of the 'I' he has to be, because the future entirely depends on which 'I' he chooses now.
Today investment can be on any thing, Industry, shares, plots, flats, Retail shop, so on and on. He has to just identify the opportunity and invest. It is something like one is planting the money seed for which the Indian youth is the manure and water. If India's economy grows in a similar fashion as it is doing today for next 10 years, then this Investor will be the most fortunate person. India is a right place and right time to invest which host the working population equal to the whole of US population. Now the few thing that is lacking in India's growth is innovation.
Innovator is a need of the hour in India, this person might not be so fortunate as the Investor is, but very much required for the current situation. This man has to innovate ways of doing things differently. Innovation is required in Alternate fuels, to make nation less dependent on Oil rich country's terms. It is required in Nuclear strategy to build great defense system. Innovation is required in the current bureaucrarcy to make process faster. India can find the Investors but it is becoming difficult to find the Innovators. Todays advanced countries are built on the innovative ideas of the Innovators in their nation in its initial growth period.
Income seekers or so called labourers are the real working community, but these are the unfortunate people in India. They work on the ideas of Innovators to make the Investors more fortunate. One can find large chunk of these people in all the Industry today. They earn for their needs, requirements and a little comforts depending on their earnings. The ratio of investors to Income seekers is relatively low in India, It is therefore necessary for some of the Income seekers to move into the Investors segment. Now the question how can it happen? If not then what is the solution.
There is an answer for it, there is one more segment of people who are Income seekers but also Investors. Hence if this segment grows, there is an opportunity for everybody to be fortunate in this nation. Then the classification can be made on process rather than persons like "Investment" , "Innovation" and "Earning" .