MUMBAI: The General Insurance Council has taken up certain proposed amendments in the Carriers Act of 1865. The new Act which is already before the Rajya Sabha has proposed various amendments to the existing Act which pertain to inland transit.

However, two changes to sections 10 and 17 that have made the general insurance industry unhappy.

The General Insurance Council has made a representation to the transport ministry through the insurance regulator and finance ministry regarding both sections.

Inland transit pertains to transportation of all goods through commercial vehicles either within the state or inter-state.

The insurance company provides a cover for the goods that are being transported. According to the changes, new Act proposes to limit the liability of the transporter to Rs 10,000 only.
In the existing act of 1865, section 10 had a limit on liability pertaining to only ‘precious commodities’ like gold to the extent of Rs 100.

The new Act will do away with this distinction and instead limit liability for the transporter to Rs 10,000 on all commodities. This means that the insurance company will have to bear the entire burden of the risk and liability singularly.

“There will be no reason for insurance companies to write policies for vehicles above this limited liability. It will hurt not only the insurance companies but trade and industry as well,” KN Bhandari, secretary general, General Insurance Council.

The other part which insurance firms are objecting to is the widening of the exclusions.

As per the proposed changes, which firms claim have been made without consultation with them, the new Act also excludes arrest, restraint, or seizure due to legal causes and fire, explosions or unforeseen risk.

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Wipro bigwig Azim Premji is back in news. IT harbinger Premji has, yet again, featured in the Forbes list, this time as one of the world’s ten richest tech titans. Precisely, sixth. Accompanying the likes of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer among others, Premji sure has kept the tri-colour flying above most others.

Inarguably these men–and yes, they are all men–have changed the world. Some of the companies they founded–Microsoft , Oracle , SAP, Dell, Wipro –form the foundation of the working day for millions of office workers.

“None of the actual robots featured in this year’s E-gang (our annual roundup of tech innovators) are likely to become billionaires, but some of the inventors-cum-entrepreneurs behind the next generation of robotic assistants might.” Forbes quoted on its website.

The world’s ten richest technology billionaires have a collective net worth of $174.2 billion, or more than the gross domestic product of Israel. Bill Gates, worth $50 billion, has been the world’s richest man for 12 consecutive years, while Azim Premji is a well-deserved sixth with a networth of whopping $13.3 billion. Even the poorest in the group, SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, with an estimated net worth of $6.4 billion, ranks among the hundred richest people on the planet. (All net worth estimates are from the most recent issue of The World’s Billionaires.)

Others–Google, eBay–have transformed everyday activities like shopping and searching the Internet. Not only have they themselves become rich, but countless individual investors have enriched themselves by riding on their coattails.

But their restless entrepreneurial energy hasn’t been confined to their companies. Three of the ten–Plattner, Paul Allen and Pierre “Omidyar–aren’t even actively involved in the companies they founded.

Allen is at the centre of a dizzying array of activities. He was the sole investor in SpaceShipOne, which won the X-Prize for the first privately funded trip to suborbital space in October 2004. He has funded everything from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to a museum devoted to the history of rock” the site commented

He owns both the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trailblazers, and maintains dozens of investments in everything from energy to cable television to movie studios. His Paul G. Allen Family Foundation gives away tens of millions annually to nonprofit organizations in Seattle and Washington state.

After all, great innovation is often rewarded with great wealth.

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