Public Policies, Financial Inclusion and Inequalities: A Review of Recent Trends in India and Mexico

Since the 1990s, financial exclusion has been pointed out as a prominent social problem by policy makers and development scholars.

While microfinance market-based approach was recognized by international agencies as one of the highest profile policy aimed at fighting poverty through the provision of financial services, there has recently been a paradigm shift from microfinance to financial inclusion.

Unlike previous microfinance programs, financial inclusion's approach renews with the idea of State intervention motivated by persistent inequalities along social, ethnic, gender and geographic lines. In that perspective, public programs are aimed at accelerating the democratization of access to financial services among the poor populations.

Building on previous field works and ongoing research projects, the paper will describe several public programs implemented in the last ten years in India (Swabhimaan, Bank Saathi model) and Mexico (Prospera and Patmir). We will analyse their aims, motivations and main outcomes.

This will allow us to isolate new hypotheses on what we can call a ‘political economy of financial services’ massive distribution’.