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This essay critically examines the discourse of participation in development finance directed at the poor in the Global South from national and international development agencies. This discourse, often termed financial inclusion, posits the ability of development actors to reach the poor involving them in important economic decisions affecting their lives, provides access to products that improve their material conditions, and ensures their credit worthiness through highly nuanced information technology and social media tools. The paper presents evidence from two ethnographically inspired studies undertaken by the author in India and Kenya to ascertain the ways in which the participatory discourse in finance is understood among societal participants themselves. The paper presents relevant epistemes for analyzing what 'grassroots' actors understand as their participation in development-oriented financial inclusion projects. The study forwards two major conclusions: (1) 'habits of authority' among various development actors thwart effective participation; (2) technology platforms that allow for successive innovations and interconnections from businesses and other organizations encourage financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, the only way for the population of developing countries to access the Internet was through expensive smartphones, designed in and for developed countries. In the past few years, however, a major new innovation has emerged, the smart feature phone with Internet connectivity, which was specifically designed for those with low incomes in developing countries. This paper explains the development process for the smart feature phone, how this has influenced the nature and extent of adoption, and its use by low-income groups, including their demonstrated preference for uses related to entertainment rather than more traditional "work-related" goals. The focus is on the case of India, where the JioPhone has already reached millions of people with low incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key agenda of policy-makers in both the developing and the developed worlds is to have an inclusive growth. Financial services have been recognised as one of the fundamental services that have the potential to achieve this objective and help move towards a more just and equitable society. This paper attempts to assess the impact of three information and communication technology-driven initiatives in the field of financial services by differentiating them on the basis of service design. This study goes beyond the stated objective of these services and uses Sen’s capability perspective to study their impact across three non-economic outcome variables viz. literacy, service-specific well-being and empowerment. The data for the study are collected from the urban poor across different locations in a large metropolitan city in South India where the three different services are being offered. The study follows a quasi-experimental design (field study) and ensures matching of the treatment and control groups through propensity score matching. The matched data are analysed using an independent samplet-test. The result of the analysis shows that service design plays a key role in increasing service literacy, improving service-specific well-being and empowering end users. The study suggests that the true challenge for providers (government and partner agencies) of these services is in designing a service that ensures a balance of structure and flexibility without constraining the choice of end users through innovative service blueprints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]