India is a country where the majority of the population resides in the rural areas. Benefits of any welfare scheme should be measured by the impact it provides to rural India. The insurance regulator in India mandates a certain amount of business activities by any insurance company to be in rural India.
The maximum impact though is provided by the public sector insurance companies which have customised insurance plans for specific sectors. There are a host of mass insurance schemes which reach out to almost 40 million people. India's economy to a very large extent is dependent on agriculture that in turn is heavily dependent on the monsoons for their farm output. So, insurance companies have special schemes for farmers to cover against these risks.
The insurance companies play a big role in providing low cost health insurance schemes also targeted at the poor whose incomes cannot afford any form of hospitalisation costs. Innovation is the need of the hour and we need our insurance companies to manufacture insurance plans which cover the most commonly occurring risks which will help the large poor population of India from going bankrupt with the most basic disease.
Rashtriya Swashthya Bima Yojana is one such plans for those the masses. It is unique in the sense it caters to only people below the poverty line and covers five members in each family. It is done through smart cards which has details of the family members and hence it very efficient in tracking and makes it tamper proof unlike paper cards and slips. Each card has a Rs. 30,000 in it and can eb used for any of the five members who are part of the family and recorded in the database. Since it is a smart card it can be used throughout the country. The government foots three fourths of the premium and hence encourages members to enrol.