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Remember the crispness of your first pocket money? That ten-rupee note, handed over by a parent, felt like a certificate of growing up. You remember its texture, the rustle it made, the sheer, tangible power it held in your small palm. You remember the weight of the coins you’d get back as change, and the satisfying clink as they dropped into your gullak. That entire sensory world, the very physical theatre in which we learned our first, most crucial lessons about money, is vanishing.
It’s being replaced by the silent, sterile, and utterly abstract ping of a UPI transfer. In our embrace of a cashless future, we have accidentally orchestrated the death of pocket money as we knew it, ending childhood’s last great cash experience and raising a generation for whom money is just a number on a screen.
The ‘Gullak’ University: The Lessons We Took for Granted
The humble earthen piggy bank was more than a savings tool; it was every Indian child’s first university of finance. The curriculum was simple but profound, teaching lessons that no app ever could.
The first lesson was Tangibility. Money was real. You could hold it, count it, stack it. You understood that ten one-rupee coins were the same as one ten-rupee note because you could literally exchange them. This physical relationship built a concrete understanding of value. You could feel your wealth growing as the gullak got heavier.
The second lesson was the Pain of Paying. To buy that coveted comic book or a handful of candy, you had to physically part with your savings. You handed over the note, and it was gone. That small, sharp pang of loss was a powerful teacher. It was the natural friction that taught you to pause, to consider: is this worth it? This friction is the bedrock of budgeting.
The final and most important lesson was Delayed Gratification. The only way to get that cricket ball you desperately wanted was to patiently feed the gullak, day after day. You would shake it, trying to guess if you had enough. It was an exercise in sabr (patience), a fundamental virtue learned through the slow, rewarding process of accumulation.
The UPI Allowance: Money as a Video Game Score
Now, contrast this with the experience of a child today. Pocket money isn’t handed over; it’s transferred. It appears as a notification, a number that magically increases on their parent’s phone screen. For a child’s brain, this is indistinguishable from the points scored in a video game.
This abstraction has profound consequences.
Dr. Neha Sharma, a developmental psychologist specializing in childhood cognition, puts it starkly. “When money is just a number, it loses its connection to the real world of effort and scarcity. A child sees a parent pay for a ₹50 ice cream and a ₹5,000 grocery bill with the exact same physical action: a tap. How is a child supposed to intuitively grasp the vast difference in value between those two things? The parent’s phone becomes a magic wand that grants wishes, and the numbers are just arbitrary figures.”
The “pain of paying” is completely gone. Spending is now frictionless. A tap for a pizza, a tap for an in-app game purchase. There is no tangible loss, only the acquisition of a desired item. This makes impulsive spending far more likely and the concept of a budget incredibly difficult to grasp. The gullak had a physical limit; you could see when it was empty. A digital balance, for a child, can feel infinite. They don’t see the salary that came in or the bills that went out; they only see a number that, when they ask, seems to magically replenish.
A Parent’s New ‘Dharma’: Explaining the Invisible
This shift has placed an enormous new burden on parents. The old, intuitive methods of teaching financial discipline are now obsolete. It has become a parent’s new dharma (duty) to make the invisible, visible. They now have to actively narrate the entire financial backstory that was once self-evident.
“I literally have to sit my son down and show him my banking app,” says Arjun, a father of two in Noida. “I have to say, ‘Look, this number is the salary. Now, watch. This is the house rent going out. This is the electricity bill. This is what’s left. The money for your toy comes from this small part.’ It’s a constant, exhausting effort to connect the abstract numbers to real-world work and consequences.”
This is the new financial literacy. It’s less about counting coins and more about explaining complex digital systems. Some parents are resorting to a hybrid model—giving a digital allowance but insisting that their child maintain a physical notebook to track their “digital” spending, a desperate attempt to re-introduce some friction and tangibility into the process.
Conclusion: The End of an Era, and a New Educational Imperative
UPI is a national triumph, a symbol of India’s technological prowess. Its benefits are undeniable. But in celebrating its success, we must not ignore the subtle, profound ways it is reshaping the next generation. The death of physical pocket money is not something to be mourned with Luddite nostalgia; it is something to be understood as a major pedagogical shift.
We have not lost the concept of an allowance, but we have lost the intuitive, sensory classroom in which its lessons were taught. The weight of a coin, the rustle of a note, the heartbreak of an empty piggy bank—these were not trivial things. They were the tools that built our financial foundation.
Our challenge now is not to go back, but to innovate our teaching. We must find a new language to explain the value of a rupee that can no longer be held. We must teach the story behind the numbers, the effort behind the ping, and the finitude of the balance on the screen. If we don’t, we risk raising a generation of digital natives who are masters of the tap-to-pay but novices in the timeless art of value, patience, and financial wisdom.
How are you navigating the world of digital pocket money with your children? Have you found a new kind of jugaad to teach them financial literacy? Share your stories and strategies in the comments below. Let’s learn from each other. Forward this article and follow IndiLogs for more conversations about our evolving Indian life.
