Many initiatives aim to help the poor to save cash, in an echo of long‐standing concerns. New technologies, harnessed to the lessons of behavioural economics, offer diverse unmediated tools for depositing savings. These so‐called financial innovations have not always brought about the results expected, however. This paper draws on an ethnography from southern India to highlight the contradictions between unmediated saving and relational saving, defined as saving transactions that are both shaped by and constitutive of social relations.
In the context studied here, ceremonial expenses are major forms of relational saving. Unlike unmediated saving, they operate over the long term, on various scales and serve multiple purposes. They allow for the accumulation of lump sums in order to organise large events. But they also ensure the reproduction of the social group (and set the definitions of its reproduction). And they not only express, but also transform, strengthen or bypass pre‐existing social and interdependency relations, or even create new ones. They are embedded within multiple, overlapping ties of hierarchy and obligation, but also within emotional, unique relationships. The design of innovative financial tools should take inspiration from relational saving, rather than ignoring it.
