What is better investment other than a FD in India

What is a good investment that is risk free and at the same time offers a return slightly better than a FD.This is a question that is being constantly asked by some of my NRI friends who have mostly invested in NRE FD or NRO FD accounts in India.
Return from a NRE FD is at around 3.5% and from an NRO FD is around 5% after adjusting for tax deductions at source.Now these are safe avenues and one can put the money with out the fear of losing capital.However, how safe is the principal considering the inflation effect which may eat into your returns over a period of time.

After going through some of the liquid funds and other debt funds options, I am in the process of shortlisting some of the alternative avenues and one such investment is the money market fund Reliance MIP scheme(Monthly dividend).

Now do not be mislead by the word monthly dividend, there is no guaranteed monthly dividend and the term could be misleading.However, having done some research on their returns based on facts from valueresearchonline.com, I can safely conclude that this is a better option than investing in FD, the fund has clocked a one year return of 26.25%(The net returns may be slightly lower considering the tax adjustments). This scheme was launched in December 2003 and the fund has given a return of 13.5% over a five years period of time and an impressive 11.86% from the launch date.

The equity exposure of this fund is around 15% as of 31,December 2009 and the rest of the portfolio comprise of 75% in debt related(NCD,Government securities) and 9%cash and cash convertibles.

Based on facts and strong track record I would advice my friends and other investors to invest in this scheme as an alternative to FD.
How to Invest
You can directly invest online if you have an online trading account with HDFC or ICICI or other brokers.Alternatively you can ask some one from India to send you the forms, so that you can fill up the form together with the cheque to authorized banking agents or distributors of the scheme.
This investment suggestion holds good not just for NRI's and resident Indians can also invest in this scheme.
Disclaimer
No investment is risk free and there is no certainty that past returns are repeated in future.
Views expressed here are personal and I am not connected with any fund house or broking house or any third party sources and nor a marketing agent for Reliance Capital or any other Asset Management companies.

VVS Laxman is spot on

VVS Laxman in his chat with Harsha Bhogle has expressed about the dearth in Spin bowling department in India. He is spot on and hit the bullet right at the centre like the way he times his wrist flicks.

Harbajan appears to look jaded with the overload and time is catching up with the offie.Amit Mishra and P.Ojha look good only in patches.Murali Karthick is more or less finished thanks to the selectors whimsical ways and Piyush Chwala once thought out to be the ideal replacement for the Great Anil Kumble did not do justice to his potentials.So as VVS expressed, this is a worrying aspect for Indian Cricket.Spin was our strength right from the Bedi,Chandra,Prasanna,venkat era till the Anil Kumble era and the so called home advantage that the team enjoyed seems to have been faded.
The only heartening thing is the quality of pacers spearheaded by Zaheer who have won matches of late.There is a danger with too much of cricket with IPL,ODI"s,CLT20,T20 etc is going to make life difficult for the pacers and one clear case in point is that of Ishant Sharma who showed lots of promise in 2008 against Australia and was looking threatening but over the last year or so appears to have been hit by the overkill and was even dropped recently.So BCCI neds to really think of doing some thing serious about the spin department rather than focusing on maing more money through hurriedly arranged tournaments be it T20 or ODI.