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What is a Digital Public Infrastructure?

The mention of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in the recent Finance Minister’s budget speech brings the discourse on this topic bang into the center. The importance of DPI in our daily lives is so high that it seems like the air that you cannot see, but then cannot live without. This article will attempt to demystify this topic and extend the scope to running governance on a DPI. 

Lets take the example of UPI – one of its kind of a mechanism for payments in the world. UPI transactions crossed INR 12,98,726.62 cr in Jan’23 alone

The same can be said of Aadhaar, which is estimated at ~1.35 Bn registrations 

Both these Mega initiatives run on open source software and core infrastructure that is accessible to anyone. This is one of the reasons that India is being looked up to in adoption of these kind of initiatives across the world. 

Redesigning Governance on a DPI

Given this backdrop of India leading the world in Digital Public Goods (Derived from a DPI), we now have the capability to redesign governance and welfare delivery to all the citizens.

India is at the cusp of a major transformation in its public services driven by a young demographic that is immersed in technology. The transformation in governance that India seeks will be driven by the ability to cater to the aspirational expectations that are similar across rural and urban areas. 

The digital divide of the 80s has been subsumed through a rapid expansion in Telecom Infrastructure expected to reach 1 billion smartphone users by 2026 with rural India driving this growth at 6% CAGR. India’s tryst with digital governance targeted at “Citizen – Govt, interface” began in the 1980s significantly with automation of Railway reservations. This has exponentially expanded with the introduction of Aadhaar, UPI & Jan Dhan accounts. 

India’s capability to leapfrog into the area of digital governance is enhanced by the availability of digitized identities in the form of Aadhaar, Payment infrastructure (UPI) and Jan Dhan Bank Accounts (~47 cr).

Ecosystem Innovation is critical to realize the vision of Inclusive governance that can reach citizens across all strata of society, removing bottlenecks of Geography, Language, Caste or Class and empowering citizens individually to assert and avail their entitlements. 

Introducing Web3 for governance & Public Administration

Specifically avoiding the term Blockchain due to the noise created by unscrupulous actors and Ponzi schemes, nonetheless, Web3 at its core is a governance infrastructure on a technology called the Blockchain. 

Note – Web3 on a Blockchain is a form of DPI since its open source, not licensed, and can be repurposed as deemed fit by the user of the technology. 

The capabilities of Web3 enabled by a technology that can ensure non tamperability and immutability opens up multiple use cases of automating identity and document verification. 

Web 3 technologies dispense with the need to have any third party playing a role in verification. This can dramatically reduce time taken to verify and transact, at scale, by a host of disintermediation possibilities emerging from a non-tamperable trust mechanism.

The routine procedures of the administration – verification and a response by criteria/rules – is ripe for disintermediation that will make procedural mechanisms truly neutral, impersonal and scalable. Administrators will be able to reduce overheads, focus on increasing value-adding capabilities and reduce the discretion provided to routine gate-keeper functions.

Providing every Indian a digitally managed identity and empowering us by offering digital access to the services of the state – and tracking it to completion – can be enabled by effectively using blockchain solutions. A digitally managed identity should be both a right and a necessity to reduce the friction of interacting with the state, leading to ease of governance. 

Disintermediation of governance

This implies ease of governance enabled by digitalization which re-intermediates offering conveniences that can be widely provided with the current state of technology. Transparency, Feedback and Localization are the key benefits of digitalization.

Trust in the veracity of information provided by a digital object, in this case representing a person or his/her credentials, allows disintermediation of Time & Place and the need to go to a physical office at a fixed time. 

Within the operating domain of improving governance for ~1.4 Billion citizens of India, the time is ripe for the Introduction & Implementation of a Digital Public Infrastructure that can help fast-rack the actioning of the government’s policies – at the State & Center.

These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.


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