Description
Household debt in India has grown significantly in the last decade. During this period the India Stack vision for digital infrastructure development has been installed and has expanded rapidly. This paper seeks to understand the relationship between the two. Household debt in India has increased from around 9% of GDP in 2014 to over 17% in 2024. This rise comes in the context of India being known as a nation of savers. India Stack is a project about more than just lending, it is an all-encompassing digital infrastructure to promote financial and social inclusion. This paper interrogates the political economy of India Stack, to better situate and understand the rise of the Stack in relation to the rise of household indebtedness. It draws attention to the limits of the socio-technical vision of progress that India Stack embodies, and the new potential harms and vulnerabilities produced by fintech-enabled indebtedness.
