You may need money in a year for your vacation or to pay the fees for your child in a foreign university or for your daughter’s marriage. In such cases, you would like to put your money in those assets, which give you flexibility to withdraw without losing its principal value and also getting a reasonable return. Hence equities, equity oriented mutual funds, real estate, and commodities are out of question because they are extremely risky in short term. Safe Government backed schemes such as NSC and PPF are also out of question because they have lock in period more than a year