Austerity welfare: Social security in the era of finance

Abstract

With the launch of the new financial inclusion programme in 2015, the government of India claimed that more than 90 per cent of households now have access to bank accounts. The programme sought not only to link the poor in India to financial services such as credit and savings, but also to insurance‐based welfare payments. This article examines how the expansion of welfare programmes – a seeming alternative to austerity – in India has simultaneously hinged on arguments of fiscal conservatism. In other words, financial inclusion has also served to curtail government expenditure through payment systems and financial infrastructures. However, as the poor are drawn into new financial products, it raises the question of ‘who benefits’ when welfare systems are streamlined through the banking system.

Shifting terms: Development discourses and moral imaginaries in Indian state service provision

“…But while a standard narrative of neoliberal adjustments might anticipate a straightforward rolling back of social welfare, government spending on programmes aimed at the poorest has instead continued to grow over the past few decades (Kruks-Wisner, 2018: 59). While fiscal conservatism has curtailed social services in some sectors, government investment in programmes focused on social security, employment, infrastructure, education, micro-enterprise, and other development indicators has increased (Gooptu, 2011; Gupta, 2012: 292, Kar, 2017).…”

“…Since the early 1990s, India has seen many of the reforms associated with liberalization: austerity finance (Bear, 2015; Kar, 2017), the privatization of government jobs and services (Moodie, 2015), the creation of special economic zones (Levien, 2018), and a boom in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporate sponsors involved in development initiatives (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002; Kudva, 2005). Many government services have adopted the programme models and discourses associated with these private-sector development agencies, focusing on empowerment (Sharma, 2008), capacity-building, and financial inclusion.…”

Disciplinary Technologies of Microfinance: Fictitious Proximity, Visibility and Surveillance in Rural Microfinance in Bangladesh

“…I find from the testimonies of loan officers that if a loan officer looks after a borrower very closely and intimately, she gets more regular repayment of debt. The loan officers, as proxy creditors, physically and emotionally integrate borrowers into microfinance system through creating new kind of socialities, obligations, and expectations in India, for instance (Kar, 2015). However, in Bangladesh, the loan officers' close and informal interactions are found fictitious proximity in microfinance practice.…”

“…These forms of conducts are found fictitious and deliberate, and loan officers believe those relationships can foster repayment performance. Kar (2015) terms this close and informal interaction as emotional labour which is similar in the form of the loan officer's powerful affective ties created through everyday interactions to pressure women into regular payment. She argues, affectional pressure on borrowers obliges them to recognize their personal and intimate responsibilities to the loan officers rather than an impersonal legal obligation to the lending organizations.…”

Disciplinary Technologies of Microfinance: Fictitious Proximity, Visibility and Surveillance in Rural Microfinance in Bangladesh

“…These forms of conducts are found fictitious and deliberate, and loan officers believe those relationships can foster repayment performance. Kar (2015) terms this close and informal interaction as an emotional labour which is similar in the form of loan officer's powerful affective ties created through everyday interactions to pressure women into regular payment. She argues, affective pressure on borrowers obliges them to recognize their personal and intimate responsibilities to the loan officers rather than an impersonal legal obligation to the lending organizations.…”