Research Projects

Back to all Research Projects

Intermediaries, Cash Economies, and Technological Change in Myanmar and India

2015-2016

PIs: Janaki Srinivasan, Elisa Oreglia (Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies, London)

Funding agency: This project has been awarded a research grant by the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the School of Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

Description: The fieldwork for the project took place in 2015-16 and explored the roles played by financial intermediaries in agricultural markets in Myanmar and India. It examined what value intermediaries bring to monetary and financial transactions on the one hand, and what value these transactions bring to the lives of intermediaries on the other. The project hopes to explain why promises of disintermediation languish and financial intermediaries persist in the digital age.Read more at: http://www.imtfi.uci.edu/research/2015/srinivasan_oreglia_2015.php

Publications:

  • Srinivasan, Janaki. 2021. “The Social Meaning of Mobile Money: Navigating digital payments, savings and credit in the Global South.” In V.Sridhar (ed.). Data-centric living: Algorithms, Digitisation, Regulation. Routledge.
  • Srinivasan, Janaki and Elisa Oreglia. 2020. “The Myths and Moral Economies of Digital ID and Mobile Money in India and Myanmar.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 60, 215-236.
  • Oreglia, Elisa and Janaki Srinivasan. 2020.” Human and non-human intermediation in rural agricultural markets.” Journal of Cultural Economy 13(4), 353-367.
  • Oreglia, Elisa; Janaki Srinivasan and Krish Raghav. 2017. Intermediaries, Cash Economies, and Technological Change in Myanmar and India. Report for the UC Irvine Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion, https://www.imtfi.uci.edu/files/images/2017/Myanmar-India%20Mobile%20Money_OregliaSrinivasan_2017%20Report_FINAL.pdf

Other outputs:

No Cash, No Intermediaries? Workshop at IIIT-Bangalore, November 11, 2016 (with support from Institute for Money Technology and Financial Inclusion, University of California Irvine).

CITAPP at IIIT Bangalore is an interdisciplinary think-tank set-up to focus on the policy challenges and the organizational demands made by technological innovation. Of particular interest to the Centre is how technological advances, along with institutional changes that harness the legitimacy and the powers of bureaucracies and market, address the needs of underserved communities.