Sensemaking of digital money among female peripheral agents: a short ethnographic study of informal workers in North India.

This essay compares how digital money is conceptualized by the government with sense-making and practices among women workers in North India. The government promotes and envisions a future with large sections of the population within the fold of ‘Digital India’. The policy rhetoric emphasizes capacity building, both in terms of improving infrastructure and training people to be able to use cashless modes of payments. However, in its positive narrative, the inclusion of women is mentioned only in passing, thereby rendering them peripheral in the government’s vision of a digital economy. Further, through focus group discussions and interviews carried out with women working at the intersection of formal and informal economy, the analysis establishes that our respondents are peripheral agents because of the economic and social structures which constrain them from formal and effective access to digital money.