On Sunday, Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Infosys and founder-chairman of the Aadhaar project, announced that a global coalition of multilateral organizations led by external affairs minister S Jaishankar will implement India's digital public infrastructure (DPI) model in 50 countries over the next five years.
“So, over the next few years, you will see the proliferation of how this new way of thinking about digital infrastructure at population scale, using an open architecture, is going to be more and more ubiquitous and prevalent around the world,” Nilekani said, speaking at the B20 Summit in the national capital.
Because of the growing need for cash transfers to fortify vulnerable areas and people, and for emergency support following major climate events like floods, the DPIs will also play an important role in climate adaptation and mitigation. “For example, one of the things that will happen in climate adaptation is you want to give anticipatory financing for building more resilient homes in the situation of higher sea levels,” Nilekani said, “and you can do that using DPI.”
Similarly, "reverse logistics" can be constructed and a circular economy enabled through recycling and waste reduction using the Open Network for Digital Commerce platform. In addition, the DPIs' underlying technology can be employed to provide a unified access network to power sources in tandem with the rising popularity of electric vehicles.
“So, fundamentally, not only has DPI helped us so far, it's also going to help us in the future,” he added. According to Nilekani, DPIs are more than a "nice to have" because they were important in India's rapid reaction to the pandemic, allowing for large-scale financial transfers and vaccinations of the whole population.
He also referred to DPIs as a "data empowerment architecture," since the data produced by these systems is a form of "digital capital." He continued, "The digital capital can help people advance in their careers and their lives. You can utilize the information to improve your financial situation, your career prospects, and your skill set. India has also overcome the problem of formalization by bringing people onto the government's rolls via DPIs, whereas most countries in the Global South struggle with this issue. Nilekani claimed that the shift was hastened by the high concentration of both talent and startups in India, as well as the country's advanced digital public infrastructure.
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