Wed. Mar 27th, 2024
Reserve Bank of IndiaReserve Bank of India

On Thursday, the apex financial institution of the country announced a ‘5 crore actions’ approach. They said the initiative is to promote financial education among the citizen. It would include work for the development of relevant content for school children and adults, community participation, and collaboration among various stakeholders. The ‘National Strategy for Financial Education 2020-2025′ (NSFE) that the Reserve Bank of India released suggested a multi-stakeholder led approach to spread financial awareness. They have made their motto of five C. The Cs represent Content, Capacity, Community, Communication, and Collaboration.

The Government of India and the financial regulators have set their eye on the agenda of reforming education and strengthening the financial inclusion of the countrymen. The four financial regulatory bodies being RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, and PFRDA. NSFE had said that “Financial literacy supports the pursuit of financial inclusion by empowering the customers to make informed choices leading to their financial well-being.”

Strategic objectives have been laid out and planning has been made by NSFE to gain their goal of creating financially aware and empowered India. The planning includes steps like spreading financial literacy concepts among various sections of the societies, encouraging active savings behavior. Financial education is an important life skill that the institutions acknowledged. There are more approaches taken by the institutes. Like encouraging people to participate in markets to meet financial goals and objectives, helping people to develop a credit discipline, and also encourages a major portion of the community to avail credit from the financial institutions. They also look forward to spreading digital awareness among people making them aware of the importance and advantages of using a digital economy. This would also make the country a step closer to the Government’s “Digital India” initiative. Not only awareness has to be spread about using the digitized form of the currency, but people in the country also must be educated on how to securely and safely use the form. Crime related to this is a regular incident in the country and the rate is only growing with every passing year, educating the public would resolve this.

The document produced also focuses on how people can manage through relevant and suitable insurance cover and save money to be financially secure in old age. It also focuses on improving the financial literacy content of the school children, teachers, young adults, women, new entrants at workplace/entrepreneurs (MSMEs), senior citizens, persons with disabilities, illiterate people. Literacy can be implemented by children by introducing the subject in their regular curriculum or through seminars conducted in schools and colleges. NSFE action plan for 2020-25 is said to have updated the content of financial education in the school curriculum for students of classes VI to X.

Option to develop and start a financial education course, like B.Ed./M.Ed. along with other teachers’ training courses to educate the teachers about financial education which they can pass on to their pupils. The organization also plans to develop a mobile application and use social media to reach its goal. Technical Group on Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy (TGFIFL) would be responsible for periodic monitoring and implementation of the National Strategy for Financial Education according to NSFE.

Periodic monitoring would also be done on the activities of the stakeholders for the dissemination of basic, sector-specific, and process literacy. Since its launch in 2013, various measures have been taken to improve the financial education of the country. Financial stability causes physical and mental well-being for the people and also reflects on the country’s economy. The document said, “The NSFE document intends to support the Vision of the Government of India and financial sector regulators by empowering various sections of the population to develop adequate knowledge, skills, attitude and behavior which are needed to manage their money better and plan for their future.”

 

By Swastik Bhattacharjee

A student from Kolkata. Currently content creator at The Indian Wire.

One thought on “RBI Implements Action Plan to Impart Financial Education Through NSFE 2020-25”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *