Sebi To Hook Housewives, Students To The Bourse Game

Come August and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) will kick off its plan to convert virtually the entire country into a class room to teach the public about investing in the stock markets.

Sebi wants to take special classes for housewives to equip them to take investment decisions or question decisions made by their husbands. The markets regulator also wants lessons on the equity market included in the standard XI and XII syllabus in schools.

Next month Sebi will be launching what perhaps is the most ambitious investor education programme anywhere in the globe, involving the state and central government machinery, to empower the people with power to move the markets.

Prime minister A B Vajpayee or finance minister Jaswant Singh may inaugurate Sebi's nationwide education programme.

The programme will go beyond the metros and touch even small towns where seminars and lectures will be held by academicians and market participants. These are to be attended by state chief ministers.

And men had better beware -- their wives may start questioning their investment decisions, if Sebi chairman G N Bajpai has his way. "Right now, the wife questions the husband's choice of a particular brand of consumer goods or apparel. Once she understands the equity market, she will start questioning her husband's investment decisions," he chuckles.

Bajpai believes that Sebi needs to catch them young. "We must start from the school level if we really want investors to understand the market. The aim is to enable investors to make informed choices and decisions and achieve fair deals in their financial dealings," says the Sebi chief.

And before educating the masses, market intermediaries will be taught a lesson or two -- companies will be asked to enhance disclosure standards on a continuous basis.