India DPI proposition (GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Context:
- At the outset of its G20 presidency, India announced that promoting “technological transformation and digital public infrastructure (DPI)” would be one of the six key priorities of its tenure.
- In particular, India asserted that it would advocate for a “human-centric approach to technology”, and “facilitate greater knowledge-sharing” in interlinked thematic areas such as “DPI, financial inclusion, and tech-enabled development”.
India’s role:
- As the leader of the G20 in 2023, India has been able to raise an extraordinary level of awareness about DPI among countries of the Global North and South, through the interventions of the G20 Digital Economy Working Group, the new high-level Task Force on DPI for Economic Transformation, Financial Inclusion and Development, and several G20 Engagement Groups.
- Today, the DPI model has emerged as a key Indian offering to the world and is being considered, adopted or adapted by nations at varying stages of development.
Transforming India:
- As foundational population-scale tech systems, DPIs enable the flow of individuals (through digital identity systems), money (through real-time swift payment systems), and information (through consent-based, privacy-protecting, data-sharing systems).
- The pioneering, integrated architecture of India Stack helped India become the first nation to develop all three foundational DPIs; the Aadhaar unique identity, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA).
- Taken together, these three layers have revolutionised public service delivery and democratised innovation on a scale never seen before.
Global influence:
- Given their low cost and inherent scalability, there is much interest among other nations to explore the establishment of DPIs.
- The Indian presidency has been able to leverage this burgeoning interest and shape it into concrete outcomes, or at the very least into diplomatic declarations that formally recognise DPIs’ power and potential.
- In May 2023, for instance, the European Union-India Trade and Technology Council acknowledged “the importance of DPI for the development of open and inclusive digital economies”, and stated that the DPI approach helps “promote inclusive development and competitive markets and accelerates progress for achieving the 2030 Agenda”.
- The EU and India have formally agreed to collaborate on improving the interoperability of their respective DPIs and use that as a basis for promoting secure privacy-preserving solutions for the benefit of developing countries.
DPI-focused bilateral engagements:
- The progress of DPI-focused bilateral engagements has also been impressive.
- For instance, following Indian Prime Minister’s state visit to the United States (US) in June, a US-India Joint Statement conveyed that both countries intended to work together to “provide global leadership for the implementation of DPI”.
- Similarly, the meeting of the Indian and Japanese foreign ministers in July included a forward-looking focus on collaborating to strengthen DPI as part of tech partnerships to build a strong and open Indo-Pacific.
- During PM Modi’s visit to France, the two countries signed an agreement to make UPI available in France, to enable seamless cross-border transactions and lower the cost of remittance payments and fund transfers.
- This made France the latest in a series of nations with whom India has UPI-related bilateral agreements.
- These include Singapore, Australia, the US, the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Nepal and Bhutan. Since early 2023, Japan too has been assessing the possibility of adopting India’s UPI system.
MOSIP:
- The core value of DPI for developing nations, and as an accelerator of the SDGs, is now widely recognized. India’s Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) was set up in 2018 to support countries seeking to build foundational digital identity systems.
- Today, nine developing countries have partnered with India through MOSIP, and are drawing on Indian expertise to build their national ID platforms, further consolidating the status of DPI as a global digital public good.
- Finally, during its G20 presidency, India has entered into Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with eight developing countries, under which India will offer them access to its India Stack architecture and DPI infrastructure at no cost.
Multilateral endorsements
- The United Nations has endorsed the DPI approach, emphasising its ability to “unlock innovation and value at scale” and to “create exponential societal outcomes”. At a recent international seminar on DPI, both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank expressed their unqualified support for DPI.
- The IMF points out that India Stack has not simply transformed India’s digital landscape, but also offers lessons for digital transformation worldwide.
- It commended DPIs for enabling direct benefit transfers, promoting financial inclusion, and supporting 87 percent of India’s poor households during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- A recent World Bank report presented to the G20, argued that India Stack has helped the country achieve 80 percent financial inclusion in the last six years.
Outcomes at the G20:
- G20 member states were able to achieve consensus around a shared description and understanding of DPI and to agree that addressing issues around DPI governance would be crucial.
- The Group adopted a high-level “G20 Framework for Systems of DPI” outlining principles for the design, development, and deployment of DPIs. This framework is likely to prove valuable for countries that are planning to implement or are in the process of building their DPI ecosystems.
- A consensus has been forged on the need for increased and coordinated funding to develop DPIs in low- and middle-income countries.
- Taking cognizance of the information gaps surrounding DPI, the G20 welcomed India’s proposal for setting up a virtual Global DPI Repository to host DPI-focused tools, resources, practices and experiences from around the world.
AI-based solutions:
- The smart use of DPIs also has implications for countries’ AI development efforts. Large volumes of data are a critical component of DPIs, and they could be an asset for training AI models, provided that the principles of data privacy, security, and confidentiality are firmly upheld.
- As part of DEPA 2.0, for example, India is already experimenting with a solution called “Confidential Computing Rooms” which are “hardware-protected secure computing environments where sensitive data can be accessed in an algorithmically controlled manner for model training”.
- Such environments allow data to be used in compliance with privacy and security guarantees for citizens. As more countries begin to adopt these approaches, DPI could emerge as an enabler of AI-based solutions as well.
What lies ahead?
- Despite the common understanding of DPI achieved at the G20, there is a need to theorise DPI further, and to devise frameworks and models for assessing what does or doesn’t qualify as DPI.
- These frameworks could subsequently help shape the formulation of laws governing such infrastructures, which will increasingly be required to build trust and offer certitude to businesses and innovators about the reliability of DPIs.
