Financial untouchability: a polysemic narrative of digital financial inclusion in Modi’s India

Abstract

ABSTRACT India’s post-GFC digital financial inclusion project has been conveyed by an officially constructed polysemic narrative that connotes three distinctive semantic fields: (a) post-colonial Indian developmental policies; (b) post-GFC financialising neoliberal financial inclusion programmes; and (c) traditional Hindu religious values of money and wealth. By assembling a semiological conceptual toolbox from the works of Barthes, Eco, and Ricouer we analyse this specific phenomenon of polysemy in India’s financial inclusion narrative. Based on our findings we develop an argument for a connotative approach to economic discourses as a possible alternative to metonymic understanding of the relationship between language and things in studying markets, economy, and neoliberal policies.