The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Insurance can mitigate the economic impact of events like illness, death, disability, fire, theft, and natural disaster on individuals, households, or enterprises. In doing so, insurance helps people avoid destitution, regularizes their consumption, protects their assets, and allows them to pursue high-return economic activities and make investments.
Addressing at the at the “Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Insurance Institute of India, Mumbai” at Mumbai, the vice president said that increasing the access of poor households to insurance mechanisms will prevent them from having to rely on publicly funded support systems. It can encourage them to adopt alternative, more productive livelihoods – for example, planting higher-yield crops insured against the risk of drought- that can help to lift them out of poverty. This would also enable the government to target scarce public resources at the poorest so that a higher share of poor households is covered by the public social protection system.
He opined that in this way, insurance is a useful strategy on a continuum of risk management options. Ensuring that poor households have access to insurance services should be priority for us in India.
