Abstract

India's digital public infrastructure (DPI) comprises initiatives like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), etc., which are significantly reshaping welfare and the financial landscape of the country. In this seminar, we examine this DPI, its features, key actors and how it has increased the dominance of finance and financial markets in the Indian economy. Firstly, we explore how the proliferation of digital payment systems, particularly UPI, has provided access to banking and financial services to much of the population. Secondly, we delve into the role of UIDAI in providing biometric identification services and explores how its processes drive financial inclusion. The DPI has facilitated new kinds of public-private interactions and has attracted companies such as Google, Walmart, the Reliance Group, the Tatas, the Adanis, etc. We examine why these private businesses have made significant investments in building services on the DPI and how they profit from increasing the role of finance in the economy. Combining quantitative analysis of transaction data with qualitative insights gained from elite interviews, this research provides critical perspectives on policy implications for welfare, evolving state-big business relations and the role of finance, financial markets and financial institutions. This research contributes to the literature by showing how the growth of India’s DPI has accelerated the financialisation of the Indian economy.

Speaker

Jai Bhatia

Jai Bhatia is a Departmental Lecturer in Global Governance at the Oxford Department of International Development. She convenes courses on Global Trade and Finance and Global Environment Governance for the MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy. Her research examines the growing power of finance in emerging economies. More specifically, it examines how financialisation develops with country-specific modalities by exploring the role of public sector banks, private banks, the stock markets, and how political and institutional structures, regulatory processes and state-big business relations produce and reproduce the global neoliberal system of accumulation. Jai has worked at the University of Cambridge and SOAS University of London. She has a doctorate in international development from SOAS, University of London, and an MSc in South Asian Studies and an MBA from the University of Oxford. She is professionally qualified as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA). She has also worked in business and finance in the UK and in India.

Chair

Louise Tillin

Louise Tillin is a Professor of Politics in the King’s India Institute. Her new book Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines the development of India’s ‘welfare state’ over the last century from the early decades of the twentieth century to the present. Her forthcoming edited collection (with Rob Jenkins), Deconstructing India’s Democracy: Essays in Honour of James Manor, will be published by Orient Blackswan in 2025. Her earlier books include Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins (Hurst & Co/Oxford University Press, 2013), Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian States, edited with Rajeshwari Deshpande and KK Kailash (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2015), Indian Federalism (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2019) and The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government, 2004 to 2014 (with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano and James Manor) (New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2020).

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