Making the right choice

Over the last few years, one topic that I have written about several times is the superiority of fixed-income mutual funds over bank fixed deposits. It's not an exciting topic - the difference between the best and the worst equity investments available to Indian investors is an order of magnitude higher than the difference between the best and worst fixed-income options. So it's natural that savers don't have too much interest in the topic. However, that's not the best way to think about this issue. For better or for worse (in my opinion, for worse), India has traditionally been a 'fixed-income country'. Generations of savers turn automatically to savings instruments like PPF, bank deposits, post office deposits, etc. for all their savings needs. The fact that this is suboptimal is a separate story, but