Everyday experiences of digital financial inclusion in India's ‘micro-entrepreneur’ paratransit services

Abstract

Self-employed labour in transportation is a notoriously precarious form of employment that occurs throughout many developing countries. In order to offset high-cost and insecure vehicle procurement arrangements, paratransit fare structures are formulated on the basis of a set of logics designed to maximise revenues. Although entrepreneurial, when these logics occur in conflict with public fare legislation, they are undertaken illegally, or informally, and are perceived as undesirable by policy makers and transport users. However, the underlying structures that necessitate these practices are seldom examined despite their significant effect on mobilities and the livelihood experiences of male entrepreneurs. This paper engages with critical literatures on the financialisation of poverty reduction to present financialisation as a class-based mechanism that, with the rapid increase of digital payment and ‘alternative’ credit scoring, structures micro-entrepreneurship and precarity in the neoliberal context of India. The paper argues that digitally enhanced financial inclusion techniques may steer low-income workers toward mainstream finance institutions modelled on the global economy. They enable profit to be generated by investors and private microfinance companies. However, new financial technologies do not do little to reduce the risk and expense of microfinance, nor do they increase micro-entrepreneurs' profit margins. Moreover, they threaten the informal practices entrepreneurs use to self-manage their financial precarity.

Financial technology to address the liability of poorness? A typology of FinTech organisations

“…However, poverty entrepreneurs, embedded in cash economies, have difficulty adapting to FinTech or digital financial solutions (Baker, 2021). For example, income, age and/or educational differences make it hard for certain people to access the Internet and digital finance (Ozili, 2018).…”

Digital Financial Inclusion

“…In the literature, many studies on digital financial inclusion have emerged. In the year 2021 alone, many studies examined digital financial inclusion in relation to economic growth (Ahmad et al, 2021), entrepreneurship (Baker, 2021), urban-rural income gap (Ji et al, 2021), poverty reduction (Wang and Fu, 2021), investment diversification (Lu et al, 2021), complex systems (Dai, 2021), research and development (Sun et al, 2021), etc. Despite the increasing number of studies on digital financial inclusion, digital financial inclusionin terms of its meaning, goal, components, instruments and regulatory issues is not generally understood.…”

Psychometric profiling of individuals using Twitter profiles: A psychological Natural Language Processing based approach

“…According to some researchers, digitally enhanced financial inclusion techniques may steer low-income workers toward mainstream finance institutions modeled on the global economy. 12 Some scholars have noted in their work, that financial exclusion continues on the basis of social class with the entry of new actors and technologies involved in FI as a result of financialisation. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] It is the mechanism through which financial motives, markets, actors, institutions, and technologies, take an increasing role in the operation of economies.…”

“…With financial inclusivity on the rise to accommodate the 1.7 billion unbanked adults in the financial institutions 11 the main challenge faced is the lack of credit history for these “thin‐filed” clients. According to some researchers, digitally enhanced financial inclusion techniques may steer low‐income workers toward mainstream finance institutions modeled on the global economy 12 …”