Pro‐Poor Populism or Financialized Governance? The Politics of PMJDY and PMMY in India

This article examines the intersection of financial inclusion, pro-poor populism, and financialized governance through an analysis of India’s Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) and Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) schemes. Promoted as flagship initiatives to empower the poor and overcome “financial untouchability,” these schemes have become central to the Modi government’s development discourse. Yet, beneath their emancipatory rhetoric, they function as instruments to integrate informal populations into the formal financial system by exposing them to new forms of market vulnerability. While financial inclusion is often equated with empowerment, the concrete issues, such as widespread dormant accounts, rising non-performing assets, and growing reliance on direct benefit transfers, reveal structural limitations. Situating these policies within the global turn toward “finance as development,” the article argues that PMJDY and PMMY represent a broader shift from redistributive welfare to financialized governance. Though framed as pro-poor populism, their top-down and technocratic design reflects the governing paradigm of authoritarian populism under financialized governance. These programs simultaneously legitimize the government’s popular appeal while deepening market penetration and embedding financial logics into welfare provision. Drawing on policy documents, financial data, and critical literature, the article demonstrates how India’s financial inclusion agenda signals a deeper transformation in statecraft, where welfare is reconfigured through finance to produce a new, market-mediated form of economic citizenship in the Global South.