By Dr Adam Sargent, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Abstract

This talk introduces a new research project I will be conducting on digital lending and everyday forms of indebtedness in India through an analysis of scandals around “fake loan apps.” Developed by quasi-legal companies who engaged in aggressive loan recovery tactics “fake loan aps” were responsible for driving several borrowers to commit suicide. Rather than an aberration, I argue that the scandal around killer loan apps draws attention to the ways that digital lending is shifting the terms of debt relations in India. Specifically, the scandal highlights the politics of data in digital lending. Legitimate lenders feed this data into algorithmic systems capable of generating credit scores for the unbanked. Viewed through the lens of fake loan apps, however, these collateralized data relations appear as key sites of contestation around the social networks implicated in new forms of digital debt.

Speaker’s Bio

Dr Adam Sargent is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Trained in cultural anthropology, his research focuses on capitalist development, labor, infrastructure, and social inequality. He has explored these issues through research projects on construction work in India and engineering work in the U.S. His current research explores how the emergence of algorithmic credit-scoring systems is reshaping credit and livelihoods in India. This research will contribute to the Western Sydney University node of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S).

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