Maintaining India's Tech Leadership

Backed by a cultural ethos of creating knowledge systems for public welfare in the public domain, India will be at the forefront of the world's digitalisation and tech-democratisation movement

- BY T.V. MOHANDAS PAI

Today, India is undoubtedly among the Top 3 digital powers in the world in terms of the percentage of digitally involved citizens among the population and the total quantum of businesses and start-ups with a robust digital presence. India has become a densely networked country with 1.2 billion mobile connections and 850 million internet connections, with among the cheapest data costs in the world. Nearly 150,000 gram panchayats have been connected with optic fibre to benefit rural citizens.

India also has the unique distinction of having built population-scale digital public goods (DPGs)—a set of networked, interoperable, multiplatform public utilities like Aadhaar, UPI, e-KYC, Account Aggregator (AA), Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and more—upon which innovators can build world-class apps and platforms using open APIs. This unique public-private partnership model has removed the threat of digital monopolies developing in critical socio-economic areas and led to a flowering of innovation in the country. Human capital is abundantly available, and the DPG platforms are a unique Indian innovation based on a millennia-old cultural ethos of creating knowledge systems for public welfare in the public domain.