Spurred by the success of digital public goods and infrastructure like CoWin (portal for covid vaccination drive), and UPI (unified payments interface) at home, India wants to share the technology with emerging economies, one of the persons mentioned above said.
“India hopes to develop partnerships, especially with the global south which is development-oriented, as well as demand-driven,” the person said, requesting anonymity.
Known as the Indian Stack, India’s digital infrastructure encompasses various platforms such as Aadhaar, DigiLocker, DigiYatra and UPI, which have been developed through multi-sector collaborations.
The goal of these digital public goods (DPG) and digital public infrastructure (DPI) is to provide a seamless and efficient way for citizens to access government services and promote inclusive development.
India has seen massive success in some of its popular DPI programmes like CoWin, UPI, DigiLocker and Diksha (national digital infrastructure for teachers) at home.
“Some of these DPIs and DPGs can easily be replicated in other emerging economies to great advantage,” the person mentioned above added.
So far, countries like Ethiopia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Togo have utilized or tested technologies and services from the India Stack.
A finance ministry spokesperson didn’t respond to emailed queries.
India, through state-backed institutions like The Exim Bank, provides lines of credit (LOCs) to overseas financial institutions, regional development banks, sovereign governments, and other overseas entities.
These LOCs enable buyers in partner countries to import developmental and infrastructure projects, equipment, goods, and services from India, on deferred credit terms.
The LOCs also help promote exports of Indian goods and services and are spread over different sectors like agriculture, infrastructure, telecom, railway, transmission/power, and renewable energy.
On 15 January, Mint reported that India is considering reforming the lines of credit (LoCs) it grants to other countries to improve its economic diplomacy.
So far, India has extended over 300 lines of credit to 65 countries with an estimated value of $30 billion.
Meanwhile, out of 166 countries globally, only 24% of government organizations are classified as digitally advanced, delivering against transformation-focused digital initiatives, according to the digital public infrastructure Playbook for nations released by Deloitte recently.
The report stated that DIVOC, a digital public good from India used to generate secure and verifiable covid vaccination certificates in various countries, such as Sri Lanka, Jamaica, and Indonesia, enabled a vaccination credentialing backbone for many countries and supported trade and borders openness amidst the pandemic in a timebound manner.
“Indian stack is a set of solutions that have been tested for scale, social impact and citizen experience and acceptance. Besides that, some of them are quick to deploy too as one-click deployments on cloud,” said NSN Murty, partner and consulting leader, government & public services, Deloitte India.
“The adopter nations can pick up the solutions with minimal process reforms, deploy them as pilots and scale them fast. Also, this allows for the local technology ecosystem to create innovations on top of the quick deployments,” he added.
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Published: 28 Jan 2024, 10:40 PM IST