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The purpose of this study is to examine the key research question, which is whether fintech innovation for financial inclusion has been successful in India? As fintech has been popular in many countries, there is very little understanding on how successful it has performed in India for financial inclusion. This research attempts to ravel important factors that may or may not have a direct or indirect impact on fintech innovation for financial inclusion, thereby dissecting the empirical data to reveal important information for the reader.

This study covers a comprehensive literature review, from which key variables are discovered, then develops hypotheses to be examined, followed by proposing a research model. The survey data examines important research instruments for fintech inclusion in India, identifying and measuring factors, leading to partial least squares (PLS) model testing. Finally, the key findings are reported.

The findings reveal that fintech innovation from variables such as users experience and motivation for digital payments drives usefulness and ease of use leading to financial inclusion. The security, trust, transparency and customer support when built into the fintech innovation for digital payments influences perceived ease of use (PEOU) and usefulness that mediates to uplift financial inclusion directly. Whereas perceived usefulness (PU) anchoring happens to be a precursor for the financial inclusion. On the contrary, cultural values for fintech innovation through PEOU and usefulness had no impact whatsoever on financial inclusion, thus demystifying cultural influences as non-influential factor.

Research limitations are that the study was conducted in India, and may not be generalised in other countries; however, it can be modified to fit future research. Survey data captured was from a particular region of South India, which may differ from the rest of the country. The sample size and research period were adequate; however, larger data sets would be more meaningful for longitudinal studies. As India is the second most populous country in the world, a comparison with other similar countries of the same size and geographical location will be useful for future research.

This research reveals that financial inclusion is much more complex than previously known and that the penetration of fintech has the capacity to go deeper and include a large number of people into the mainstream financial system and ameliorate the inequities in urban-rural gender and caste. The user’s experience, culture and motivations positively influenced the usefulness and ease of use for driving the financial inclusion of digital payments. Further security, trust, transparency and customer support can facilitate the use of central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a tool for financial inclusion.

Fintech innovation for financial inclusion is based on the successful acceptance of the digital payment system by people in the society. This research has identified that for any fintech innovation, it is essential that society needs to benefit from it. Encouraging a larger population to switch to digital payments offer challenges and opportunities. While the opportunities are enormous research suggests that early adopters of new technology go through different phases of testing, in which a society can completely accept an innovation or can completely reject an innovation if the two mediating factors such as PU and ease of use do not perform as predicted, thus having a higher failure rate. On the other side, if such an innovation as fintech becomes successful it has the capacity to bring billions of people into mainstream financial inclusion, a success story that can greatly benefit the Indian society and which can be replicated among other countries in the world.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt in an effort to understand the influential factors from the point of view of users for the adoption of CBDC for financial inclusion. The main contribution of this paper is to examine the role of CBDC as an instrument to foster financial inclusion in India, which has not been attempted so far. The originality also lies to the heart of the research is dissecting and making meaningful sense of the empirical data, developing and measuring research instruments and hypotheses and finally adopting a PLS model to answer the key research question, which is whether fintech innovation for financial inclusion can be successful for India?

Purpose: The goal of this study is to delve into the causes behind the Fintech sector’s rise in various areas and its prospects. Fintech is rapidly expanding because of government legislation, multiple schemes, consumer expectations, a cashless economy, digitisation, globalisation, innovation, and other drivers.

Need for the Study: Fintech firms are forming alliances with traditional financial organisations to stay afloat and compete. India is becoming a superpower regarding e-startups, especially unicorns. Many startups are undergoing initial public offerings (IPOs). Fintech is an emerging space in India, spreading its wings rapidly in every sector.

Methodology: This work is based on a literature review. It utilises secondary data from numerous research publications, magazines, newspapers, published reports, relevant websites, Forbes magazine articles, stories from The Economic Times, the RBI Portal, and information from StartupIndia, Assocham, and Pwc, among others, to develop a conceptual framework showing the growth drivers of Fintech.

Findings: The whole world has been affected severely due to COVID-19. Crisis always comes with some opportunity, and it is up to us how to turn the calamities into opportunities that further turn into innovation that has the power to lead the world. Fintech is that fruit that had been born normally but grew abnormally (tremendous growth) during the pandemic. Also, the roots are so deeper that they will flourish more and more. It has been found that the emergence of a cashless economy, ease of internet connectivity, etc., are the major factors that paved the way for growth for Fintech in India.

Practical Implications: This study contains the conceptual framework which can guide the stakeholders, policymakers, management teams, field experts, etc., in knowing about their area expertise and looking for improvement, if any.

Originality: There are many papers on the relationship between Fintech and financial inclusion, but this is the first study that builds the conceptual framework for the growth drivers of Fintech.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of the relative performances of Mother’s canteen across the regions of Tamil Nadu and find out the determinants of inefficiencies in the scheme.

An untargeted food security scheme called Amma (Mother's) canteen was started in Tamil Nadu, India, with an aim to provide the urban poor with hygienic and healthy food at an affordable price. Along with secondary data, interviews were conducted to understand the operational details of Mother's canteen. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to find the relative efficiency of the scheme operated by nine corporations.

Based on the daily expenditure, number of meals served and revenue, seven of nine corporations were found to be inefficient. Further, sensitivity analyses found that among six procurement variables, procurement (quantity and price) of black gram and cooking oil were determinants of inefficiency.

As an untargeted scheme, the cost of delivering service-based evaluation was used for performance evaluation. Policymakers could use centralized procurement instead of open market procurement at the corporation level and standardized ingredients' usage (quantity) to further reduce the cost of the food security scheme.

The proposed DEA model may be used by policymakers to empirically evaluate the food security scheme's delivery effectiveness across various corporations in a region. Inefficient branches are identified here with empirical support for further performance improvement changes.

There are limited number of studies evaluating untargeted schemes. This paper presents the challenges of evaluating an untargeted scheme which allows self-selection of beneficiaries. The outcome of this study will help in identifying inefficient corporations, and further, improve the performance and cost of delivering untargeted food security scheme.

The public distribution system (PDS) is an Indian food security system established to manage the distribution of food grains at affordable prices. As a result of the population explosion, the long-established PDS system finds it challenging to maintain operational efficiency, quality, trust and transparency. This paper explores the possibility of leveraging blockchain technology to overcome these operational hurdles.

Through a literature review and expert interactions, the present research identifies critical success factors in terms of enablers and barriers that influence the adoption of blockchain technology in PDS. Furthermore, we propose two independent interpretive structural models (ISM) and MICMAC to characterize these attributes.

The research identifies 15 distinct enablers and ten barriers that influence the diffusion of the latest technology in the sector at focus. The analyses disclose the interrelationships/dependencies among these enablers and between barriers, along with their individual driving power and dependence power.

The research showcases the importance of automating the system and illustrates how the features of blockchain technology can assist in augmenting stakeholder satisfaction levels. However, poor or nonexistent government regulations and patronage are found to be the major impediments to adoption. The research also delineates the cost implications of this barrier through its interrelationships with other barriers.

Interesting inferences are drawn from the models that offer actionable insights for the industry, government and technologists for improving PDS performance. Such interventions will ensure national food security through enhanced trust and transparency, which can further improve efficiency and effectiveness.

The case study will help to learn about the importance of pre-sanction precautionary measures before lending to self-help groups (SHGs), to learn about the potential lapses and errors while sanctioning SHG finance and to learn about the importance of bank’s guidelines and compliance before sanctioning loans.

This case study details the tenure of Seema in a rural branch of Safe Bank of India located in Haryana which she joined as a manager in the year 2016. She overachieved the target given by the district collector office, and going by the tide, she kept her reliance on the references provided by non-government organization (NGO) without complying the bank’s instructions. She committed errors while sanctioning the loans, which led towards the upsurge of non-performing assets of the branch. Later on, after investigation it was discovered that she did not follow fundamental bank’s instructions. In wake of those lapses and errors, how she could have avoided those lapses and secure the public money? What were the most important documents while granting agriculture finance and what due diligence she should have taken? How did she treat calls from the government departments? Was she right in trusting the suggestions of the NGO?

This case study caters to students of various streams, namely, management, business administration and law, and can be targeted at both undergraduate and postgraduate students. It could be suitable for several types of courses and students. Furthermore, this case study can also be targeted for various training programmes for bank employees and employees of various lending institutions engaged in agriculture finance and credit linkage programmes.

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CSS 1: Accounting and finance.

The penetration of technology and the strengthening of evidence-based policies have paved the way for the automated delivery of social services. This study aims to discuss the inherent risks of this automatization, particularly those associated with the discrimination, exclusion and inequality problem, which the authors package under the theoretical umbrella of a digital welfare state (DWS).

This conceptual article reviews the literature on the welfare DWS, with an empirical focus on the recent experience of selected countries from India, Kenya and Sweden. These countries reflect three different types of welfare regimes but are connected by the same digital social risk. The authors’ exploration also includes questions about what this DWS has in common with and how it differs from the previous era. This article illustrates that there has been a very similar trajectory in regards to the development of the DWS and the associated risks in the examined countries.

DWS has triggered new social risks (e.g. discrimination, exclusion and inequality in welfare access) that are a result of data breaches experienced by citizens. Further, vulnerable groups in the digital age should be viewed not only as those who lack access to welfare services, such as education, health and employment, but also as those without internet access, without digital skills and excluded from the DWS system.

The article calls for the development of scholarly research into the DWS in particular and the contemporary one in general. The authors also predict that a critical aspect of the future regime typology rests in the ability to mobilize resources to address contemporary digital risks, as every country is equally vulnerable to them. Overall, this article can be considered to be one of the initial works that focus on cross-national comparison across different meta-welfare regimes.