INDIA'S DPI GOES GLOBAL

EARLIER KNOWN AS THE INDIA STACK, THE SUCCESSFUL ROLL-OUT OF THE  COUNTRY'S DIGITAL PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE,  SHOWCASED DURING INDIA'S PRESIDENCY OF THE G20, IS BEING LOOKED UPON AS A TEMPLATE FOR OTHER COUNTRIES TO FOLLOW

- NIDHI SINGAL

AT A G20 SESSION in March, India’s burgeoning digital services architecture received high praise from Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates. “No country has built a more comprehensive digital infrastructure than India,” Gates, also Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said.

Just a few months later, towards the tail end of India’s presidency of the G20, Gates’s views had found deep resonance among almost all the dignitaries who visited the country to participate in the Summit. What was also appreciated was the leadership role India had taken in promoting access to this infrastructure, called India Stack earlier and now India Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). The Reserve Bank of India even had a pavilion at the Bharat Mandapam where the New Delhi Leaders’ Summit was held on September 9 and 10 to showcase the financial applications that had done so much to improve inclusion.

There is good reason for this recognition. What began with the Aadhaar digital identity way back in 2009—joined later by services like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), JAM (Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and Mobile number) trinity, and CoWIN (for managing the Covid-19 vaccination programme), among others—helped India achieve 80 per cent financial inclusion in just six years, which one paper from the Bank for International Settlements estimated would have otherwise taken 47 years to achieve. Besides, the impact of these services hasn’t been restricted to just digital identity and financial inclusion; they now support efforts in the health, education, and sustainability sectors too.