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I was recently standing behind a father and his five-year-old daughter at a local kirana store. The girl was clutching a ridiculously oversized packet of imported chips. “No beta,” the father said gently, “This is too expensive.” The little girl, with the unshakeable logic of her generation, simply pointed a tiny finger at his phone and commanded, “Papa, just tap it.” The father’s sigh was a sound I’ve come to recognise—the sound of a modern Indian parent trying to explain a pre-digital concept to a digital native.
In that moment, a profound truth became clear: we are raising the first generation of Indians who believe, with every fibre of their being, that money doesn’t grow on trees; it grows inside a magical, money-spitting rectangle we call a smartphone.
The Great Abstraction: From ‘Gullak’ to Google Pay
For those of us who grew up in the pre-UPI era, the concept of money was tangible, physical, and often, a little grimy. Our first lessons in finance came from the humble gullak (earthen piggy bank). We learnt the value of a rupee by its weight, its sound as it dropped into the pot, and the sheer effort it took to save enough coins for a coveted comic book. When we spent it, we physically handed over the notes, feeling the pain of our depleting wealth. It was a sensory experience.
Enter the “UPI Natives”, children for whom these experiences are as alien as a rotary phone. Their world is one of taps, scans, and beeps. They see their parents desire something—groceries, a toy, a meal—and then perform a simple ritual with their phone. A moment later, the wish is granted. There is no visible exchange of value, no counting of notes, no painful parting with a beloved ₹500 note. From a child’s perspective, the phone is not a tool to access money; the phone is the money.
“It’s a huge challenge in child psychology today,” says Dr Anjali Desai, a child psychologist in Bengaluru. “We call it ‘value abstraction’. For a child to understand worth, they need a concrete reference. A five-rupee coin can buy one chocolate. That’s a clear link. But when a ₹5,000 toy and a ₹50 ice cream are both acquired through the exact same physical action—a tap—the concept of value becomes incredibly blurry. The phone becomes a sort of universal key that unlocks everything, and the numbers on the screen are as abstract as the score in a video game.”
“Papa, Is Your Phone’s Battery Low on Money?”
This leads to some hilarious, and slightly alarming, conversations in Indian households. The old parental adage, “Paise ped pe nahi ugte” (Money doesn’t grow on trees), has been replaced by a desperate, fumbling attempt to explain, “No, beta, the money isn’t in the phone… it’s in the bank… which is a building… but also an app… which talks to the phone… after my office puts money in it for my work…” Trying to explain the link between labour, salary, bank accounts, and UPI to a six-year-old is like trying to explain the cloud to your grandmother. You see their eyes glaze over, and you know they’ve just reverted to their original, far more logical conclusion: the phone is magic.
This creates a few predictable archetypes of the UPI Native:
- The Confident Commander: The child who, like the girl in the store, sees the phone as an extension of their parent’s willpower and simply directs its use. “Just UPI it!” is their solution to every desire.
- The Anxious Inquirer: The slightly older child who starts to grasp that there’s a catch. Their questions are gold. “If we run out of money, can we just download more?” “Does the phone get tired if we buy too much?” “Is there a password for the big money?”
- The Budding Fraudster: The enterprising little one who gets their hands on an old, discarded phone and tries to “pay” for a chocolate at the counter by confidently tapping the dead screen, perfectly mimicking their parent’s actions.
The Death of Friction and the Birth of Instant Gratification
The deeper issue is the complete erosion of “financial friction”. The slight pain of handing over cash is a natural, healthy brake on spending. It forces a moment of consideration. UPI has eliminated this friction for adults, but for children observing it, it has eliminated the very concept that acquiring something requires giving something up.
This conditions them for a level of instant gratification that is unprecedented. The modern lullaby is the UPI transaction beep. The visual cue for happiness is the “Payment Successful” screen. This has enormous implications for teaching them the virtues of sabr (patience), mehnat (hard work), and delayed gratification. How do you teach a child the joy of saving up for a month for a bicycle when they’ve seen you buy a washing machine in five seconds?
The New Financial Literacy Homework for Parents
So, are we doomed to raise a generation of financially clueless digital wizards? Not necessarily. But it does mean that the burden of teaching financial literacy has become far more complex for Indian parents. The gullak can no longer be the only teacher.
Parents are now having to invent new methods:
- Making the Invisible Visible: Some parents have started using digital piggy bank apps or even simple charts on the fridge to show the “phone money” going down as they spend, trying to re-introduce a visual sense of depletion.
- The Cash Allowance: There’s a powerful argument for bringing back the physical cash allowance. Giving a child a fixed amount of real money for the week forces them to learn budgeting, choice, and the pain of running out in a controlled, low-stakes environment.
- Involving Them in the “Why”: Instead of just tapping, some parents now talk through the process. “Okay, we have ₹2,000 for groceries this week. Let’s see what we can get. If we buy this expensive ice cream, we won’t have enough for…” It’s tedious, but it starts to rebuild the broken link between numbers and real-world consequences.
Conclusion: From Magic to Management
The rise of the “UPI Native” is a fascinating, funny, and deeply important social experiment playing out in real-time. These children are not dumb; their logic is flawless based on the evidence they see. Their confusion is a mirror reflecting how radically our own relationship with money has transformed. Our challenge as a society, and especially as parents, is to bridge this conceptual gap. We must find a way to explain the engine behind the magic trick.
The goal isn’t to demonise UPI—it’s a marvel of Indian innovation. The goal is to upgrade our parenting software to match the new financial operating system. We need to guide our children from seeing the phone as a magical source of wealth to understanding it as a powerful tool for managing wealth that is earned through effort. If we don’t, we’ll have a whole generation walking around, waiting for life to “just UPI it”.
Call to Action:
What’s the funniest or most baffling question your child has asked you about money in the age of UPI? We know you have stories. Share them in the comments below! Forward this to every parent you know who is fighting this good fight, and follow IndiLogs for more deep dives into the hilarious, head-scratching realities of modern India.
