Post Office Savings Schemes Banking On The Age

A higher risk appetite for faster and heftier returns divides India into two sections of investors. The seniors still trust the good-old Post Office Saving Schemes, while the juniors rush for new-age investment instruments.

- Jyotika Sood

If human generations could be described with a technological metaphor, think of the Arora household in Gurgaon as strung in transition between snail mail and the latest digital multimedia messaging service. The first is slow but secure, the second offers instacharm – its enticing, flickering neon itself carrying the innate risk of blinking off without a warning. The senior Aroras give us a picture of how old India saves and invests – the very entrenched habits that made us a savings country. Yes, they like to have an intelligent mix of investments, allocating portions to different schemes – but the Post Office Savings Schemes are a core part of their portfolio. The junior Aroras, meanwhile, want to be part of the heady, higher-risk, volatile equity markets. More, faster, right now.

Ajit Arora, the pater familias, himself analyses it wisely: “Investment habits are a combination of individual choices and what you pick up from your social circle. Over 35 years ago, when I started earning, incomes were low and savings tended to follow a small, modest pattern. The best option was postal schemes. Banks were not public-friendly and imposed so many conditions. Besides, our mindset was different. Our focus was on safe returns, not high returns. But my sons want more returns, and they are ready to take more risks for that.”

As for Ajit Arora himself, while having lived through a changing India, he continued a pattern: even his parents used to access post offices for all their money saving needs, he says. An index of the fact that what we are dealing with here is not a question of momentary choices – as a new-fangled intra-day investor with a phone app may be making – but a whole culture.