James Varghese
INDIA is sprinting into an AI-powered, digitally native future, yet its classrooms remain silent on one skill that could secure that future – financial literacy.
Students master quadratic equations and colonial timelines but graduate clueless about budgeting, compounding, or the difference between an asset and a liability. This omission isn’t a curricular gap – it’s a national vulnerability.
Beneath Kerala’s 100 per cent literacy badge and India’s demographic dividend simmers a youth crisis. Excessive screen time, peer-driven substance use, and digital escapism are not moral failures but symptoms of directionless energy.
When purpose is absent, distraction fills the vacuum. The answer isn’t more lectures on restraint but a positive obsession – the disciplined pursuit of wealth creation.
Imagine a 14-year-old in Thiruvananthapuram or Thrissur feeling the same rush from a 12 per cent portfolio return that peers chase through viral reels. Instead of doom-scrolling, they track Nifty futures, dissect quarterly results, and debate AI chipmakers. Investing and entrepreneurship can become the new cool, replacing fleeting trends with timeless principles.
Early habits, lifelong rewards
Warren Buffett bought his first stock at 11. By 14, he was filing tax returns on vending-machine income. India can replicate that mindset. A child who saves Rs200 and invests Rs300 monthly through a parent-supervised SIP internalises patience, risk awareness, and compounding long before adulthood – habits that inoculate against debt traps and lottery-style ambition.
Kerala, with its educated diaspora and remittance strength, can lead this change. The state’s curriculum reforms – moral lessons, anti-drug awareness, AI and robotics – show foresight. Yet, practical life skills remain missing.
Alongside coding and robotics, students need grounding in money management and financial decision-making.
From exam factories to wealth labs
For decades, Kerala’s education funnel has ended in PSC coaching centres and government jobs. Gujarat, Karnataka, and Maharashtra produce unicorns; Kerala exports nurses and coders. The missing link is mindset. Financial literacy can rewire it.
Start small
Grades 8–10: Teach opportunity cost, banking basics, and the difference between saving and investing.
Grades 11–12: Introduce equities, mutual funds, SIPs, diversification, and behavioural finance.
Students can run virtual portfolios, analyse start-up stories, and present results to peers. SCERT, KITE, NSE Academy, and the Kerala Startup Mission can co-create gamified modules to make finance experiential.
Replacing intoxication with enterprise
‘Substance abuse’ thrives where ambition starves. A teenager tracking stocks has little bandwidth for chemical highs. Financial education builds daily discipline, measurable milestones, and a sense of horizon. Parents, too, must evolve – from gold and real estate fixation to equity participation.
A policy blueprint
- Make financial literacy a graded subject from Class 8.
- Create school investment clubs linked to NSE’s virtual trading portal.
- Certify teachers through NISM.
- Hold annual stock pitch contests with seed funding for winners.
The compounding payoff
A generation entering adulthood with basic equity exposure, savings discipline, and confidence to evaluate balance sheets will create, not chase, opportunities. Kerala can become India’s first financially self-reliant state – powered not by remittances, but by knowledge, innovation, and enterprise.
The classroom is the new mint. Plant the seed of financial wisdom today – and harvest a forest of entrepreneurs tomorrow. (The author is an independent thinker based in Dubai)
