By Sanjay Anandaram & Astha Kapoor
A bipolar digital world is likely to emerge with say, Chinese standards in conflict with Western ones, tussling for market power and influence, leading to poor outcomes for users especially in the developing world, where costs of accessing digital products,services and experience will rise, diversity and innovation of technology products is likely to get limited and users can be forced into technology lock-ins without any bargaining power. This is concerning, given sensitive tech areas that relate to national security where sensitive data of citizens may not be adequately safeguarded. There is a need for an alternative to ensure a broader multipolarity in the standards conversation—this alternative can be provided by India.
India’s peculiar and admirable journey towards digitalisation is a source of inspiration in the developing world. At its core, India’s development is driven by the ideals of digital public goods (DPGs)—foundational technological architecture that enable innovation within ecosystems by reducing aggregate costs and increasing access. These are open (source) digital solutions implemented at scale, built by publicly funded entities or governments, and innovated upon by the private sector. Identity, payments, and data exchanges are the fundamental layers of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) on which public goods for education, healthcare, financial and other digital services can be built.
DPGs are anchored in the democratic values of openness, which increases adoption, innovation, and the ability of diverse technologies to speak to one another; scalability, such that they can be adapted for population-level implementation; and extensibility, such that adjacencies of technology can be discovered and used. Further, DPGs have privacy embedded and are “public goods”— non-excludable and non-rivalrous— that are initiated by the government.
They create value across all stakeholders— government, citizens and the private sector. The India example proves this—direct benefits transfers (DBTs) built on identity infrastructures (Aadhaar) were used to deliver `4.86 trillion across 4.94 billion transactions in 2021-22 alone. For citizens, DPGs help individuals and communities access and transact with the state and the market better across sectors like healthcare, financial inclusion (DBT, payments, credit and more) and services, education, taxes, vehicle registrations, skills and livelihoods, logistics, tollways, drones and many others. India’s use of DPGs has shown global scale adoption, transactions across use cases, and a vast range of challenging environments and device types. Finally, the private sector can use these “digital railroads” to innovate and serve the last mile better. Google, for example, used the ubiquitous UPI developed in India, for Google Pay. UPI has been even recommended by Google to the US Fed.
India has developed and deployed digital platforms at such scale with diverse usage environments. And despite being a low-income country, its experience has lessons for the developing world. India is now in a position to export these standards and know-how to a majority of the globe’s population. The experiences and conditions resonate with India’s own. There is immense interest as countries send learning delegations to India to experience and learn more about India’s DPGs for societal transformation. We can, given our strong technological, legal, and policy making capabilities, also offer expertise to others to implement DPGs. We need to embrace our role as an “influencer” of DPG standardisation and present an alternative to the prevailing systems.
There are several strategic actions India can take, grounded in “strategic intent”, to anchor its position as a global leader on DPG standards. This will require the necessary investment of time, talent, partners, and resources.
Strategic intent is manifested through the creation, curation and leveraging of institutions, standards, and market power that help achieve the strategic goal. A national inter-ministry initiative that oversees this effort will be necessary to ensure cooperation, coordination and execution. Institutions, backed by law, will be required to govern, finance, regulate, and manage the creation and deployment of these DPGs. Standards that define the technology, legal and policy interfaces need to be enshrined and managed. And the leveraging of India’s market power will enable the proliferation of standards. Given India’s market size, de facto indian standards like UPI can become global standards. For example, over 4.52 billion transactions involving Rs 8 trillion were undertaken in February 2022 alone.
India should set up bilateral or multilateral partnerships on DPG standards for mutual benefit with countries. We need to embed technological cooperation in our diplomatic outreach across the world and ensure that lessons from our DPGs can be exported effectively. This will involve devising funding mechanisms,devising an important role for Indian companies, training and education programmes, creating a techno-legal policy framework and a mechanism for engaging with and deploying DPGs. We should also use our membership at ISO, ITU and IEC to push petitions to further the idea of democratic public good centric standards.
Technology will play a critical role in defining the destinies of countries, most of which are developing ones. It would be a shame if India, amidst the rapidly changing global geopolitical environment, with its renowned prowess in IT and technology, its demonstrated thought, and market leadership in DPGs, misses the opportunity to achieve its tryst with destiny.
(Concluded)
Respectively, volunteer, iSpirt, and co-founder, Aapti Institute