Digital Inclusion
Context:
- Digital public goods must be flexible enough to meet a variety of demands, conditions, and experiences if they are to completely pay off.
Digital Public Infrastructure: Starting Points:
- India’s digital landscape has seen a stunning transformation because to world-first digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiatives.
- These DPIs are digital conduits that enable the seamless delivery of crucial services for the good of society. They operate similarly to physical infrastructures.
- The Indian DPI ecosystem, also known as “India Stack,” has a strong emphasis on maximising the possibilities of identity, payments, and data sharing to foster economic growth and a more inclusive digital economy.
The success India has had in creating DPIs:
- Up until this point, India has had excellent success creating DPIs that are extensively used. The World Bank claims that Aadhaar has promoted financial inclusion.
- In order to enable direct benefit transfers of social subsidies to underprivileged individuals’ bank accounts, the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile trio has been crucial. Thanks to the Unified Payments Interface, an open standard for electronic payments, we may now transfer funds instantly and digitally between bank accounts.
Overcoming Gaps:
- Indian DPIs have the potential to close wealth gaps, build a strong, resilient digital economy that supports people and organisations, and empower small businesses to expand healthcare access. They can also encourage financial and digital inclusion of citizens from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Over the course of the next 10 years, India will implement sector-specific DPIs including account aggregators, the Open Network for Digital Commerce, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, and Agristack. For DPIs to realise their enormous potential benefits and efficiency, adoption and acceptability at the public level are essential, needing a comprehensive plan to address a range of needs, conditions, and experiences.
At the G-20, it’s possible that:
- Given that India is guiding the G20 conversation on inclusive DPIs and digital transformation, this is a good time to assume leadership in this area both globally and domestically.
- From historical events and current world patterns, we can draw some crucial conclusions that will direct our future actions.
- The importance of giving users priority comes first. We must prioritise user-centric design in order to reduce the risks associated with technology use and stop the amplification of already-existing inequities between rural and urban populations, genders, or economic categories.
- Second, DPI participants must to make inclusivity a primary objective of the regulatory framework. Several countries, notably Nigeria, the UK, and Brazil, have implemented open banking with the goal of expanding financial inclusion inside the regulatory framework itself.
- Third, in order to effectively promote inclusion, DPI participants must consciously develop use cases that are tailored to the requirements of underserved target segments.
- In order for the DPI to be truly adopted at the population level, interaction with it must be expanded.
Moving forward:
- It can be quite advantageous for DPIs in the financial sector to consider the possibility of using these trustworthy human points of contact in order to lower further exclusion risks.
