Impact Analysis of FDI on Insurance Sector in India

Parliament has passed Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2015. It was first passed in Lok Sabha on 4 March 2015 and later in Rajya Sabha on 12 March 2015, which will become an Act when the President signs it. The amendment bill aims to bring improvements and revisions in the existing laws relating to insurance business in India. The bill also seeks to remove archaic provisions in previous laws and incorporate modern day practices of insurance business that are emerging in a changing dynamic environment, which also includes private participation. It is expected that the foreign investment would bring about 20,000-25,000 crore in short funds. The amendment bill hikes Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) cap in the insurance sector to 49 percent from present 26 percent. The foreign investment in insurance would be routed under foreign direct investment,foreign portfolio investment,foreign venture capital investment,depository receipts,and non resident indians. Insurance companies are permitted to raise capital through instruments other than equity shares. Instruments would be specified through separate regulations by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA). However, the voting rights of shareholders are restricted only to equity shares. Sale of shares over 1% of the total equity share capital and purchase of shares resulting in total equity share capital of more than 5%, requires the prior approval of the IRDA.It also adds provision for the establishment of Life Insurance Council and the General Insurance Council. These councils will act as self-regulating bodies for the insurance sector. The bill also grants permission to PSU general insurers to raise funds from the capital market and increases the penalty to deter multilevel marketing of insurance products. There is a strong relationship between foreign investment and economic growth. Larger inflows of foreign investments are needed for the country to achieve a sustainable high trajectory of economic growth. A major role played by the insurance sector is to mobilize national savings and channelize them into investments in different sectors of the economy. FDI in insurance would increase the penetration of insurance in India; FDI can meet India’s long term capital requirements to fund the building of infrastructures. The present paper focuses on the overview of the Indian insurance sector along with the opportunities due to expansion of FDI in insurance in India and the major challenges that it faces. Keywords: Insurance, FDI, Insurance Laws(Amendment) Bill

Key drivers influencing shopping behavior in retail store

The purpose of the study was to determine the key drivers which influence the shopping behavior of the customers in the retail store. In today’s competitive world with increasing number of retail stores, the retailers need to be more customer oriented. Retail has changed and expanded in all lines of business, be it apparel, jewelry, footwear, groceries.etc. The modern consumer is posing a challenging task for the Indian retailer. More aware, more confident and much more demanding, therefore the retailers are looking for ways to deliver better consumer value and to increase consumer purchase intention. Retailers tend to differentiate themselves by making their service easier to consumers. The study aims to study the key drivers that can influence shopping behavior in retail store. A survey (store intercept) method was employed to elicit primary information from 300 shoppers in different formats of retail stores of Lucknow. The findings reveal the factors that play a greater role in influencing the shopping behavior of customers in retail store. As such, a survey of retail store customer’s attitude towards reduced price, sales promotion, quality of the products, proximity to the home, customer service, store atmospherics were analyzed to identify the key drivers influencing shopping behavior in retail store. A questionnaire based on a five-item Likert scale, as well as random sampling, was employed for data collection. Data analysis was accomplished using SPSS software. The paper has found shopping experience, store image and value for money as three important variable out of which shopping experience emerged as a dominant factor which influences the consumer’s shopping behavior in the retail store. Since the research has established empirical evidences in determining the key drivers which influences the shopping behavior of the customers in the retail store, it serves as a foundation for a deeper probe into the shopping behavior of the customers in the retail store research domain in the Indian context.peer-reviewe

The use of intra aortic baloon pump in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi

Objective: To review the experience in the use of Intra Aortic Balloon Pump (IABP) in patietits undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) at a tertiary care hospital with a new Open Heart surgery program. Design: Retrospective study. Setting: The Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. Patients: Medical records of all patients undergoing CABG between November 1994 and July 1997 were reviewed and those in whom IABP device was used, were included in this study. Results: A total of 15 patients had IABP suppOrt during the study period. Four surgeries were done urgently while two were emergencies. There were three mortalities. Ejection fractions in all hut one patient were impaired. Among the surviving patients, the average pre-IABP Cardiac Index was 2.6 litres/mm/meter2 which registered an average increase of 21.15% after the initiation of the IABP. The Pulmonary Artery Wedge Pressure also showed an average reduction of 29.11% from the pre IABP levels reflecting an increase in the cardiac output with the use of the IABP. Conclusion: This series represents the early experience of a new cardiac surgery center in Pakistan in the use of IABP. Although the numbers in this study are too small to derive any conclusions, the overall morbidity and mortality in this short series are within acceptable limits in the high risk patients include

PeRP: Personalized Residual Policies For Congestion Mitigation Through Co-operative Advisory Systems

Intelligent driving systems can be used to mitigate congestion through simple actions, thus improving many socioeconomic factors such as commute time and gas costs. However, these systems assume precise control over autonomous vehicle fleets, and are hence limited in practice as they fail to account for uncertainty in human behavior. Piecewise Constant (PC) Policies address these issues by structurally modeling the likeness of human driving to reduce traffic congestion in dense scenarios to provide action advice to be followed by human drivers. However, PC policies assume that all drivers behave similarly. To this end, we develop a co-operative advisory system based on PC policies with a novel driver trait conditioned Personalized Residual Policy, PeRP. PeRP advises drivers to behave in ways that mitigate traffic congestion. We first infer the driver's intrinsic traits on how they follow instructions in an unsupervised manner with a variational autoencoder. Then, a policy conditioned on the inferred trait adapts the action of the PC policy to provide the driver with a personalized recommendation. Our system is trained in simulation with novel driver modeling of instruction adherence. We show that our approach successfully mitigates congestion while adapting to different driver behaviors, with 4 to 22% improvement in average speed over baselines.Comment: Accepted to ITSC 2023. Additional material and code is available at the project webpage: https://sites.google.com/illinois.edu/per

Mechanical Properties of Amorphous Silica Filled RSS1

Rice husk contains about twenty percent silica contents. Uncontrolled burning of rice husk in the commercial incinerators leads to the crystals formation of silica which cannot be used as fillers in rubber composites. Also incomplete combustion leads to high quantity carbon black in the rice husk ash. In the current study, rice husk ash was prepared by the controlled combustion of dilute HCl treated rice husk .Controlled burning was carried out in the Rice Husk Combustor.  Rice husk ash contained high percentage of white amorphous silica. Amorphous silica was mixed in RSS1 in lab scale internal mixer in various percentages. Multifunctional additives were also added in a fixed ratio to facilitate mixing and curing of RSSI. Blends were converted into uniform thickness sheets, cut into dog bone and trouser shape and were subjected to mechanical testing. TIRAtest 2810 E6 universal testing machine was used for investigation of tear and tensile characteristics .Measurement of tensile features was done  by going through ASTM D412 and tear properties were investigated according to ASTM D624.Shore A type hardness meter was used to measure the hardness of Ribbed smoke sheet (RSSI) blend. It was observed that by adding amorphous silica up to 25 percent in RSSI, tensile properties and tear properties were enhanced .Only there was a decrease in tear properties after filler loading greater than 25%. Hardness was improved by addition of various percentages of amorphous silica

DRAGON: A Dialogue-Based Robot for Assistive Navigation with Visual Language Grounding

Persons with visual impairments (PwVI) have difficulties understanding and navigating spaces around them. Current wayfinding technologies either focus solely on navigation or provide limited communication about the environment. Motivated by recent advances in visual-language grounding and semantic navigation, we propose DRAGON, a guiding robot powered by a dialogue system and the ability to associate the environment with natural language. By understanding the commands from the user, DRAGON is able to guide the user to the desired landmarks on the map, describe the environment, and answer questions from visual observations. Through effective utilization of dialogue, the robot can ground the user's free-form descriptions to landmarks in the environment, and give the user semantic information through spoken language. We conduct a user study with blindfolded participants in an everyday indoor environment. Our results demonstrate that DRAGON is able to communicate with the user smoothly, provide a good guiding experience, and connect users with their surrounding environment in an intuitive manner.Comment: Webpage and videos are at https://sites.google.com/view/dragon-wayfinding/hom

Diabetes Prevalence Survey of Pakistan (DPS-PAK): prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus and prediabetes using HbA1c: a population-based survey from Pakistan

Objectives: We conducted a Pakistan-wide community-based survey on the prevalence of type 2 diabetes using glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) as the screening test. The aim was to estimate diabetes prevalence across different demographic groups as well as all regions of Pakistan. Design, settings and participants: Multistaged stratified cluster sampling was used for the representative selection of people aged ≥20 years, residing in 378 sampled clusters of 16 randomly selected districts, in this cross-sectional study. Eligible participants had blood drawn for HbA1c analyses at field clinics near to their homes. The oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was conducted on a subsample of the participants. Overall and stratified prevalence of type 2 diabetes and its association with risk factors were estimated using logistic regression models. Main outcome measures: Prevalence of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Results: Of 18 856 eligible participants the prevalence of prediabetes was 10.91% (95% CI 10.46 to 11.36, n=2057) and type 2 diabetes was 16.98% (95% CI 16.44 to 17.51, n=3201). Overall, the mean HbA1c level was 5.62% (SD 1.96), and among newly diagnosed was 8.56% (SD 2.08). The prevalence was highest in age 51–60 years (26.03%, p\u3c0.001), no formal education (17.66%, p\u3c0.001), class III obese (35.09%, p\u3c0.001), family history (31.29%, p\u3c0.001) and female (17.80%, p=0.009). On multivariate analysis, there was a significant association between type 2 diabetes and older age, increase in body mass index and central obesity, positive family history, and having hypertension and an inverse relation with education as a categorical variable. On a subsample (n=1027), summary statistics for diagnosis of diabetes on HbA1c showed a sensitivity of 84.7%, specificity of 87.2% and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 0.86, compared with OGTT. Conclusions: The prevalence of type 2 diabetes and prediabetes is much higher than previously thought in Pakistan. Comprehensive strategies need to be developed to incorporate screening, prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes at a community level

Transport time to trauma facilities in Karachi: an exploratory study

Background: Rapid urban growth in developing countries has outpaced the development of health infrastructure, including trauma centers, leading to potential delays in trauma care. This study was conducted in Karachi, a city of 16 million people in Pakistan. Aims: Our aim was to determine the time taken to reach the nearest 24-h emergency care facility (ECF) and the government-designated trauma center (TC). We also sought to determine the availability of supplies and equipment required for basic trauma care at these centers.Methods:We selected five towns in Karachi that had the highest number of road traffic injuries (RTIs) (as identified through medicolegal records). We then measured the time taken to reach the nearest ECF and the government-designated TC from four compass points within each town. We also asked about the equipment and supplies used in basic trauma care.Results: All three TCs in Karachi were located in the selected towns and were within 5.0-10.5 km of each other. The transport times to the 3 TCs were an average of 13.3 min (+/- 7.1) and to the 16 ECFs an average of 4.7 min (+/- 2.4) (p value \u3c 0.00). Most ECFs did not have all equipment and supplies necessary for basic trauma care, 90% had the basic equipment for management of airway, oxygen, and IV fluids, 70% had morphine, and 45% had C-spine collars. Conclusions: Vital time is lost in reaching a government-designated TC. ECFs might be an alternative option, but are not fully equipped and funded to provide adequate trauma care to all