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.