Although India is heralded by the G20 for its scalable digital public infrastructure (DPI), it falls behind on international indices that measure digitisation. So why is India’s digitisation story one thing on paper and another on the ground?

The tiny QR code stuck on an e-rickshaw windshield, nestled among a street vendor’s apples, or on the inside edge of a restaurant bill, are all physical traces of a mammoth instant payments infrastructure that processed more than 3,700 transactions per second last year — India’s homegrown Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The transactions per second surpassed even Paypal and China’s Alipay. 

India has also developed Aadhaar, the world's largest digital identity programme, with 1.38 billion unique identities registered till now.

Although India’s DPI leadership is exemplified by UPI and Aadhaar, the crux isn’t the actual technology, but an approach that has connected millions in rural areas through low-bandwidth and offline solutions, enabling population-scale delivery of public services.

India’s DPI Model

Building India’s digital public infrastructure is a process that has spanned a decade. It has been a long, persistent, bipartisan journey that has navigated several bureaucratic shake-ups.

Former chief architect of Aadhaar and UPI (among others), Pramod Varma, best encapsulated India’s playbook. “DPI is not a thing you can buy. It's a way of thinking,” he has said. “It is a way of approaching a large, complex, multi-dimensional problem and trying to figure out what we can do at the core that allows it to eventually get resolved.” And problems are dime a dozen in a large country like India.

By the time India took up its G20 presidency, it was already recognised as the champion of DPIs and a broad definition was finally adopted at the international stage. DPIs are “a set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable, and can be built on open standards and specifications, to deliver and provide equitable access to public and/or private services at societal scale, and are governed by applicable legal frameworks and enabling rules to drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust and competition, and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

Building on that legacy, amid sluggish global economic growth, the G20 troika recently issued a joint communiqué on DPI, artificial intelligence (AI) and data for governance. The “troika”, made up of the previous, current and incoming presidencies of the G20 — India, Brazil and South Africa in this case — ensures continuity of agenda.

The declaration spells out the need, method and guardrails for equitable digital transformation that can bridge the gap to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

From Nouns To Verbs

India’s DPI approach is anchored by three pillars: Open, interoperable technology; robust governance; and resilient local systems. 

It wasn’t economically viable for banks to go to 700,000 villages of India in 2009. And it still isn't. “We never managed to get banks to villages,” says Varma. “But we managed to get banking to villages. We’re now addressing the verbs and not the nouns.”

The method has been to get the government to invest in a minimum level of infrastructure that unblocks a common friction point, then create a policy for the governance of DPI, and finally unleash market innovation. 

The government creates a foundational layer. The private sector then builds a layer of innovation on top of it. For India, this thinking has translated into groundbreaking innovations. 

But merely digitising existing physical processes or workflows — like creating a government portal — falls short of the definition of DPI, since it may not enable private innovation. For an initiative to be considered DPI, reach a wide scale, and have the desired impact, the foundational infrastructure should serve as building blocks for third parties to innovate, and ultimately offer services themselves. 

Measuring Progress

Despite its achievements, India ranks in the bottom half of the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) at number 97 out of 193 countries. The International Telecommunication Union’s ICT Development Index (IDI) 2024 does not include India, but its 2017 ranking had placed India at number 134. 

These rankings often fail to capture the scale and breadth of DPI-led digitisation, focusing instead on intensity or depth of use by average users. This disconnect highlights a broader challenge faced by developing nations that have leapfrogged traditional technologies to adopt innovative, low-cost solutions tailored to resource-constrained environments.

Global indices matter, because they influence perceptions among foreign investors, companies, and policymakers unfamiliar with India’s unique digital transformation. Misrepresentation can deter opportunities for collaboration and investment, underscoring the need for more accurate frameworks to evaluate digital progress.

Looking Ahead

India’s DPI philosophy extends beyond technology. It is a commitment to “identity for development”. This approach reimagines identity not as a tool for national security, but as a foundation for economic participation and inclusion. 

As the world grapples with the complexities of equitable digital transformation, India’s DPI story offers a compelling narrative. It is not just about exporting technology, but sharing a playbook for inclusive, scalable and sustainable digital progress. 

While the approach to technology has made headway with open standards, greater focus is needed on regulatory institutions and participatory governance involving the private sector and even civil society. 

The next phase of this journey will require strengthening foundational systems, building trust and fostering collaboration across sectors to establish safe, inclusive and secure delivery mechanisms that solve more of India’s problems and address unmet needs such as access to primary healthcare and education. 

The creation of a state-level DPI adoption index by the World Bank and India’s IT Ministry aims to address these gaps domestically by strengthening the digital economy, enhancing financial inclusion and fostering public-private innovation. 

The problem would be if innovation stops. “Even today, DPIs like Aadhaar, UPI or Digilocker must only be seen  as a necessary condition and not sufficient to solve problems,” says Varma. Problems like healthcare access, job creation, and financial inclusion need more advancements.

While the DPI approach should be lauded for its ability to deliver at scale, it is equally important to address the persistent gaps in basic infrastructure, the barriers of affordability and the limited advancements in sustainable digital practices.

(This is Part 1 of a two-part series exploring India's DPI model. Part 2 will examine current challenges and look at future innovations to enhance existing DPIs)