Paper short abstract:

We investigate the potential of ICTs to integrate informal street sellers in India into a "cashless" system, prospected by the recent demonetisation of currency. Based on data collected in Bangalore, we find several constraints to the ability of ICTs to cope with the backlash of demonetisation.

Paper long abstract:

On 8 November 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced, in a live televised address to the nation, that 500- and 1000-rupee notes in use by then would cease to be legal tender on midnight the same day. In the immediate aftermath of what quickly became known as "demonetisation", government narratives asserted that the use of ICTs would mitigate the backlash of the move on actors operating in the informal economy, who conduct most of their transactions in cash. Mobile-based digital wallets and biometric technologies, obtained through the national Aadhaar database, were framed as the way for informal economic actors to shift to a formalised transaction system.

This paper seeks to illuminate the extent to, and ways how, ICTs allow informal street sellers in India to enter the post-demonetisation "cashless" economy. In the aftermath of demonetisation, we collected narrative and observational data on informal street sellers in the city of Bangalore, seeking to understand their use of ICTs to navigate the new cashless scenario. We found that biometric authentication has affordances (e.g. lowering barriers to formal banking) which have been heightened by demonetisation. However, the ability of ICTs to help informal sellers navigate the new system is constrained by issues of technology ownership, access to informational networks, and infrastructural readiness for cashless transactions. As a result, the financial practices of informal street sellers do not seem to be easily reshaped by ICTs, and digitality should hence be supplemented by other means to reduce the humanitarian backlash of the move.