FINANCIAL INCLUSION POLICIES IN INDIA: THE LEGAL AND ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

This paper starts from a real conversation - interviewing a house help and her friends about their experience with UPI - which revealed a gap between how financial inclusion is described in policy documents and how it's actually lived. Having a bank account or a UPI-linked phone doesn't automatically mean someone feels confident using it independently, especially for larger transactions. The paper unpacks what financial inclusion really means beyond "opening accounts," why it matters economically (savings-investment links, protection against informal moneylenders, credit access for small farmers), and where India's flagship schemes fall short by measuring access instead of usage. It argues that legal access and lived economic reality move at different speeds, and that the next phase of India's financial inclusion policy needs to focus less on account-opening numbers and more on whether people actually feel in control of their own money.