Factors in choosing a Car Insurance in India

With 26 general insurance companies in India and various options (plans+add-ons) for car insurance, it is a tough job to narrow down on one. 

As I'm going to anyways research as much as I can I thought it would be useful to other people if I collate everything.

A simple car insurance have become so complex  now with various plans and add-ons.

Listing down few of the popular add-ons available with various insurers. These might not be available with everyone but with majority of them.

I) Zero depreciation: It's very straight forward, this is the bumper to bumper insurance. Most insurers offer this for at-least initial 3 years of the car. Any new car owner should opt for this as this will cover almost all parts include plastics and provide a 100%coverage. In normal (comprehensive) insurance, the coverage for plastic & paint is 50%, metal and wooden parts depreciate every year from 95% to 50%.

II) Return to invoice: If you have this add-on, in case if the vehicle is destroyed more than 75% or if it lost, then you will get the invoice amount (on-road price) - IDV.

As this is an add-on there is no NCB (no claim bonus) applied to the amount. Instead of choosing this we can directly increase the same amount in IDV (Insured Declared Value), at-least we will get an NCB discount of 20% for the increased amount. This might make sense for the first year, but after that I just see this as a waste of money.

III) No Claim Protect: As per the insurers this add-on can protect your no claim bonus even if you make a claim in the current year.
But the twist  is that the claim is limited to few damages like below

1. If car is damaged by others when it is parked

2. If the claim is less than 25% of IDV

3. Car is less than 3 year old.

So this is not straight forward, so look out for these clauses before opting.

IV) Road side assistance: This add on will provide road side assistance in case of a breakdown, interesting part is that this doesn't add as a claim when used and there is a cap on the max number of usage. But most car manufacturers are already providing this so this is not something that is very necessary.

V) Consumables cover: This covers the cost of the Consumables replaced in case of an accident. Consumables that come under this are engine oil, coolant, nuts,bots,bearings etc..,

VI) Engine Protect: It covers the cost of damage in case of any engine issue because of water clogging or other reasons that are not related to accidents. This is available only for first three years.

There are few more add-ons like Key replacement compensation, daily allowance, insurance cover for co passengers and drivers etc..,

I'm not going to cover those as they are all straight forward, please do a research if you want to take any one of them.

Below are few points to be noted before choosing an insurance,

1. Like all other types of  insurances, claim settlement ratio is very important for car insurance too.
2. NCB will be applied only for own damage premium/covers. It is not applicable for third party liability or for any add-on
3. As per govt, only third party liability is mandatory everything else is optional.
4. GST applicable is 18%
5. You can further reduce your premium by opting for voluntary deductions, which are a predefined sum of amount that you accept to pay for each claim. Say like for every claim you agree to pay some fixed amount like 2500rs or 5000rs or 7500rs.

Coming to the last section.. this is purely my opinion, you can skip this if you want

• Except for zero depreciation add-on I don't see any value in any of the other add-ons
• Any car older than 3 years, I believe we shud go for normal comprehensive cover instead of going for bumper to bumper. At this point of time we won't mind the scratches and cracks in bumpers.
• Return to invoice make sense may be for the first year. From second year instead of going for return to invoice increase your IDV value. 
• Few insurance companies quote high OD premium and they give a discount for that so get an exact quote for your car before ruling out any option ( but don't forget claim-settlement ratio).
• Most of your bumper to bumper insurance claims are limited, after which your policy will be treated like the usual comprehensive policy. So watch out for this. Also sometimes in a single accident they may raise multiple claims to cover various parts, this should be monitored while raising a claim.

<<You can read about my experience with one of the leading insurer in this Facebook Review, if you are still continuing and looking for something more .. 😜😜>>

All the above are purely my opinion and understanding, feel free to add if I have missed anything.

PS: Please excuse the blog article structure and formatting, writing a blog post after a very long time.

-- NaveeN

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The History Hidden In The Midst Of The Present

Nowadays the rupees is strengthening against U.S. dollars. Today 1 U.S. dollar = 39.1600 Rs. ( 1 Rs. = 0.0255 USD).

But actually when India got independence the value of rupee was so high, by that time 1 Rs. was equal to 1.2 USD .

India was one of the oldest country that had the practice of using coins. In 1600 when they estimated the total value of Akbhar's possession it was around £17.5 millions which is more than the total treasury of Great Britain in 1800, which totaled £16 million. In 1700 the Mughal empire expanded to almost 90% of south Asia and a uniform administrative tax was enforced. Annual revenue reported to exceeded £100 million in 1700 (twice that of Europe then). Thus, India emerged as the world's largest economy followed by China and France. In 1725 it went to the second place next to china in world's economy.

In 1700 the India's percentage in the overall economy is around 24.4% which more than the Europe's share of 23.3%. But it was during the British rule India lost its pride and in 1952 after India's  independence the amount contributed from India to the overall percentage is only 3.8%. According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book "The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective", India had the world's largest economy in the 1st century and 11th century, with a 32.9% share of world GDP in the 1st century and 28.9% in 10th century.

Due to the collapse of the central authority of Qing dynasty during 1875 and 1900, china came down to second spot and USA took the lead and India was pushed to 5th place. In 1950, India went to 7th spot next to USA, USSR, UK, China, France and Germany. In 2005, India's economy was $3,815.6 trillion which accounts for a 6.3% share of world income. This is how India's present condition evolved. After Independence Indians were hit by many disasters and many thought India would not survive but India made their beliefs false and survived, and now it started to compete with the world. Its our time to stand with other Indians to fight and win back the lost pride of India.

The Power Of Non-Violence

                                Actually history has the greatest mysteries. During my school days when I learnt history I don't take much interest in it, but now my interest towards it is increasing because now I have understood the truth that present is nothing without history, present is something that is derived from history without history there is neither present nor future. The great problem in history is that there is no proof, none have experienced it thus it is called as History.
                                Talking about Indian History, the greatest part is the freedom struggle. Speaking from my heart I don't like Gandhi and also don't believe that his efforts lead to freedom. I'm a sort of guy who believe in violence. I think the important things in life are Revenge ( ie tit for tat ). This is why I hate Gandhi. I have a great doubt that how the lean man fought for our freedom So I browsed the history to know much about it. I still don't know how his efforts lead to freedom but I'm clear about one of his idea non-violence and its power.
                                 Non-violence is one of the great power of Gandhi, non-violence is simple it is peaceful resistance. By non-violence also, you oppose the wrongs but the way of opposing differs, you don't get into action, you oppose by fasting or refusing to cooperate. The main difference is when you try to oppose others in a violent manner it instills revenge in others but when you oppose nonviolently then the reaction is entirely different because you have not hurt the others so no one tries to hurt you. Without non-violence Gandhi would not have travelled this much distance in freedom struggle.
                                 Truely you cannot understand nonviolence by learning you have to give it a try without a try you can never feel the difference. Try to follow nonviolence for a single day then you will know the difference. Gandhi's policy of nonviolence is a great thing for us to learn. Try to watch the movies, Gandhi (1982 - a hollywod movie) and Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006 - a hindi movie ) you will get to know more about Gandhi and nonviolence. Nonviolence is one of the greatest idea of Gandhi but still I don't know how far Gandhi's effort have succeeded because history has the greatest mysteries......

The Real Theme Behind Torrents

Many of them have actually misunderstood that Torrents is so similar to peer-to-peer but actually that is not true it has a lot of difference. Torrent can be taken as advanced version of peer-to-peer network. The main problem with P2P was, many were ready to download and only some were there to upload, ie many downloaded and only few uploaded as this goes on after a few days the file becomes unavailable to others. So in order to avoid this, the concept of torrent was introduced.
The main keywords or important terminologies in torrent are seed, leech, share ratio. Seeds : denotes the no. of people uploading the current file, Leechers : is the actual no. of people downloading the file, Share ratio : is how much you have shared, we will come to this later. The other terminologies are Availability : It denotes the number of full copies of the file available to the client, Choked : describes an uploader to whom the client does not wish to upload, Snubbed : An uploading client is flagged as snubbed if the downloading client has not received any data from it in over 60 seconds, Swarm : Together, all peers (including seeders) sharing a torrent are called a swarm, Tracker : A tracker is a server that keeps track of which seeds and peers are in the swarm. The main torrent file : contains every data about all the files it makes downloadable, including their names and sizes and checksums of all pieces in the torrent.
In Torrent the user doesn't know the actual location of the file neither he can't download the file directly, so he need to use torrent clients such as azureus, uTorrent, Bitcomet etc [et cetra]. Initially a part of the file is downloaded to your system from any peers and then you upload the part to someone else and then receive next part of the file from someone and then upload to some other. This goes on continuing till your download is finished or until you come out of the network. When you are out of the network your client is disconnected from the swarn and the others continue the same process, whenever the downloading file is completed you go to seeding mode ie you will become seeder thus others can download from you. Actually the share ratio is the ratio of the size of file you have uploaded to downloaded. If your share ratio is 1 then you have uploaded the same amount as you downloaded, if it is >1 then you have uploded more and <1 then you have downloaded more. The need for share ratio is that you need to upload atleast the amount you have downloaded orelse the file becomes unavailable. Based on the share ratio the priorty will be given so if you upload more you are given high priority to download so your speed of downloading becomes more. This is the main difference of Torrent to peer-to-peer client.
So don't ever think of downloading and going out then next time you will be given less priority, so upload and try to maintain the share ratio as 1, greater than 1 is great. So seed [upload] the file for others.

The Great Fall of Peer-To-Peer

Peer-To-Peer is actually a file sharing network, actually designed for high speed transfers but now mostly used for illegally sharing the file.The theme behind the Peer-To-Peer network is there will be Peer-To-Peer clients which have the address of central system which has the Database of files present in Peer-To-Peer network. Whenever you search for a file the central system is accessed and the original location of the file ie in which client it is present is identified and you directly start downloading from the client, you don't access the central system anymore. After you finished downloading, your address will also be added in central system and you may upload the file for other client. But in Peer-To-Peer you can control the downloads and uploads,thus you can simply download file without uploading. Many started to download files they never thought of uploading so the files became unavailable very soon. So they decided to develop another network to prevent this type of problem and thus finally the outcome was the Torrent.