Digital Public Infrastructure in India
Introduction:
- A modern marvel is India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI), sometimes referred to as the India Stack and other names. The federal and state governments, regulators, the commercial sector, selfless volunteers, entrepreneurs, academia, and think tanks all worked together to develop it.
About:
- It alludes to an open-source identity platform that can be used to build goods and applications and acquire access to a variety of both public and private services. These open digital platforms support open innovation techniques with open data, and they can be customised, regionalized, interoperable, and more.
- It includes methods for ID and identity verification, data exchange, information systems, civil registration, payment (including digital transactions and money transfers), and civil registration. Examples include the Universal Payment Interface (UPI), JAM Trinity, Digilocker, CoWIN, etc.
- The DPI platforms are based on core principles that aid in bridging the digital divide, including openness, equity, inclusivity, justice, transparency, and trust. Mechanisms for data exchange based on consent are also included in these concepts.
The USA Stack:
- India Stack is a group of APIs that enables businesses, entrepreneurs, and developers to make use of a unique digital infrastructure to tackle India’s difficult problems with the provision of presence-less, paperless, and cashless services.
- The India Stack is said to be incomplete without the following APIs: DigiLocker, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Aadhaar Authentication, and e-KYC.
Web 3.0:
- Web 3.0 is a decentralised internet that will be supported by blockchain technology. It would be different from the present Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 versions in use. Web 3.0 will give consumers ownership stakes in platforms and applications, in contrast to today, when tech firms control the platforms.
- India’s approach to Web 3.0 is to sustain continuous collaboration at scale across so many different diverse entities, which may be even better in some ways.
Using Aadhaar in business:
- Indian nationals and foreign residents who have lived in India for more than 182 days in the 12 months before the registration application are eligible to voluntarily obtain an Aadhar, a 12-digit unique identity number, based on their biometric and demographic data.
- The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory body established by the Indian government in January 2009 and falling under the purview of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in accordance with the 2016 Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits, and Services) Act (MEITy).
- Aadhaar is the biggest biometric ID system in the world. Aadhaar is viewed as a proof of residence rather than a proof of citizenship; it does not by itself grant any rights to domicile in India.
Effective government and Aadhar:
- Aadhaar’s release to the commercial sector was unexpectedly delayed as a result of the Supreme Court of India’s ruling upholding the sacredness of privacy, which would have boosted its worth.
- Due to Aadhaar’s rapid adoption and the accompanying clear convenience of doing business in day-to-day transactions for citizens, Aadhaar is now progressively being made available for use in numerous private sector apps, starting with voluntary usage.
- Private sector organisations are not obliged to get any special licence for such use; holders of an Aadhaar are free to utilise it for private sector activities. Government entities may also exchange Aadhar data across States and within States with the prior informed agreement of the citizen.
- Banks and other regulated organisations are permitted to hold Aadhaar numbers as long as they safeguard them using a vault or other comparable security methods in line with UIDAI security requirements. A new, pro-private sector UIDAI is acting swiftly to promote Aadhaar adoption and make it richer and more significant.
- With these three changes, the India Stack will be able to advance to the next stage, thanks to the outstanding alignment of an engaged political executive and driven volunteers. This is still a work in progress, as evidenced by the fact that every month there are more than 2.2 billion Aadhaar authentications and that there have been more than 100 billion overall over the last 12 years.
- The PAN database, the Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN), and the subsequent account aggregator are all benefits of Aadhaar that would not have been achievable without them.
DigiYatra and DigiLocker:
- DigiYatra is a Biometric Enabled Seamless Travel (BEST) experience that uses a facial recognition system (FRS) to ensure seamless identification of passengers at critical checkpoints like airport entry, security screening, and boarding gate clearance. This was made possible once more through a partnership between business and government. According to the pilots, more than two lakh passengers have successfully used this.
- Take DigiLocker, one of the lesser-known DPIs, for example. It has 150 million users, six billion documents stored, a seven-year implementation timeline, and a meagre budget of 50 crore. Plans are in motion to spread this dismal budget to numerous countries around the world.
- Since their KYC verification happens through them relatively quickly, many insurance and fintech companies, like Zerodha, Upstox, RazorPay, Equal, etc., would not be around today without the DigiLocker APIs.
- Here is another example. When DigiLocker was used in a Karnataka Police hiring drive to verify applicants’ academic credentials, the process was sped up by almost six months.
Effects of UPI:
- In order to speed up, simplify, and streamline cashless transactions, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) improved its Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), a 24-hour funds transfer service, in 2016.
- One smartphone application called UPI combines a variety of financial services, efficient fund routing, and merchant payments (of any participating bank).
- More than 8% of India’s yearly GDP, or over 6.5 billion transactions, are currently processed there each month.
Conclusion:
- India’s DPI, which has developed into our new commercial backbone and is accelerating India towards a $5 trillion GDP, symbolises our second struggle for independence, the economic release from the drudgery of daily life and transactions.
