‘Indian schools teach you to be poor’: Analyst says middle class trained to obey, not build

A Hyderabad-based financial analyst is calling out schools for failing to teach the real keys to wealth—arguing they’re producing compliant workers, not empowered entrepreneurs.

Hardik Joshi, writing on LinkedIn, criticized traditional financial education as a system that “keeps you comfortably poor.”

“School teaches us how to be safe. How to be compliant. How to minimize risk,” Joshi wrote. “It doesn’t teach us how to create wealth.”

He contends that while schools may cover budgeting and savings, they skip over essential tools of wealth-building—like entrepreneurship, negotiation, and investment. “We’re taught budgeting, saving, maybe basic interest calculations if we’re lucky,” he noted. “But rarely do we learn how to think like an owner.”

Joshi pointed to what he sees as the deeper flaw: a mindset rooted in scarcity. “Real wealth-building is about understanding risk, not avoiding it,” he said. “It’s about making money work for you, not just making enough to pay bills.”

Even financial literacy programs, Joshi argued, often miss the mark by focusing on how to manage income rather than break free from it. “How to manage your salary, not how to escape needing one. How to budget your small slice of the pie, not how to own the bakery.”

Joshi clarified that he isn’t dismissing education altogether. “But to highlight the difference between learning about money and learning to build wealth,” he wrote. “If you want the second one, don’t expect school to give it to you. That lesson you’ll have to seek for yourself.”