The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), in its draft Investment Regulations released on 2 July 2015 (http://mintne.ws/1dJok3K ) , has proposed that the unit-linked insurance policy (Ulip) investment rules be modified and that at least a quarter of the assets under management be invested in central government securities (G-secs). This is a strange time for such a 1970s kind of a proposal. The 70s, if you remember, was the decade when state control took on harshly repressive tones. As a Financial Express editorial points out, this draft flies in the face of the attempts to make institutional investing more market-linked. For instance, there is pressure to get the Employees’ Provident Fund to invest more in the stock markets and to remove the restrictive 50% in equity investment threshold in the National Pension System. At such a time for the insurance regulator to announce a rule that hobbles investment choices of households is strange.