“KOLKATA: Private sector general insurance major, ICICI Lombard will now cover lives of 16 million passengers of Indian Railways who travel with the railways daily on some 7000-odd trains.

This cover is against loss of life or disability due to train accidents and the Railways has paid Rs 34.72 crore for the cover. This is about Rs 4 crore less than what the public sector insurers had offered in 2005-06. Past year, the cover was provided by Reliance General Insurance before which it was being provided for by the four public sector insurers for a number of years. Confirming the development, ICICI Lombard’s official spokesperson Mr Kartik Jain said, “The cover will start from September 20, 2007 and will be effective till September 19, 2008. We had emerged the lowest bidder and have now bagged the cover for the India Railways.

ICICI Lombard has designed the cover with adequate reinsurance support.” The reinsurance support is to make sure that a portion of the risk is transferred to reinsurance companies. Meaning, these reinsurance companies will also share the claims payment.

Number of train accidents, however, are on the decline. In 2006-07 it was a shade less than 200, against 234 in 2005-06. According to the latest available data, as many as 315 people lost their lives in train accidents in 2005-06. About Rs 2.21 crore was paid as compensation to families of 168 people killed and 483 injured in 2005-06 in the previous fiscal.”

This practice by the Government (Ministry of Railways) to insure its passengers may be inimical to the concept of Sovereignty and stretching market logic and business sense a bit too far. I agree that it makes business sense to insure but there are certain principles which just need to be upheld regardless of whatever and Sovereignty is one such principle. Nothing can happen to the Sovereign and Sovereign is the guarantee for all its citizen. If Sovereign itself were to show a ‘feet of clay’ by seeking insurance for itself, how can it guarantee the life and liberty of its people? Does not it look strange- Sovereign insuring its own people against the (unintended) affects of its own actions!!

I can make my submission more clear with other illustrations. Are our defense and nuclear installations insured? And our nuclear weapons? These can do more damage than a train accident! How will we look in front of the whole world when having claimed ( and rightly so) our right to develop, test and deploy nuclear weapons, build atomic installations, harness nuclear energy and having assured the world about safety norms, we go on to insure those in the name of business sense! Certainly Chernobyl was not insured and neither is Parliament House, Rashtrapati Bhavan. And I am sure even White House or Buckingham palace is not insured!

Business sense should normally be the guiding criteria where other overriding concerns are not there. But in case of any seeming repugnancy between business sense and unquantifiable lofty principles, I think we should err on the side of principles to the extent of repugnancy. If business sense is to prevail, we need no Republic Day celebrations and that ostentatious display of might in Delhi. If business sense is to prevail, we need to insure all petty thefts cases where the cost of investigation far exceeds the amount of theft. If business sense is to prevail, we need to insure our land on the borders which bears the searing and lascivious look of our enemies. And if business sense is to prevail, we need to insure the forlorn faces of our malnourished populace which bears the signature of neglect by our government.