India uses Aadhaar, UPI platforms for striking digital diplomacy with friendly nations

New Delhi: India is taking its digital success stories like Aadhaar, Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) among others to countries as a means of furthering digital diplomacy. This effort which is a collaboration between Ministry of Electronics and IT (MEITY) and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) involves hand holding countries with whom India has good diplomatic ties with to recreate some of the technology platforms like the unique identity number, digital payments, eSign etc in developing countries which have similar demographic or socio-economic issues like India.
"The idea is to establish India as a tech hub, generate more business for private companies while improving bilateral partnerships,” a senior official told ET requesting not be identified. The person added that is a realisaton in multilateral forums in the especially G20 that India has digitalised rapidly particularly when it comes to public digital platforms like Aadhaar, UPI and digital locker that have been validated in terms of roll out, scale, speed of implemented especially in a vast country like India. “There is a lot of interest and feelers from other countries… So there is a thought that India can help other countries build similar capabilities through product platforms help in socio economic transformation liked they have has helped India.”

For instance, India has already built an e-office platform for Sri Lanka last year, and work has started with Cambodia on soil health card project where a team of officials from India has already visited the South East Asian country for the initial work. Morocco is interested in building an Aadhaar like digital identity programme while UPI is being explored in in Singapore and in United Arab Emirates. Some of other potential countries could be from other African and South East Asian countries.

The official said that protocols are still being developed and effort to recognise more countries is still on. While some countries are reaching out to the government on their own seeking help with building a platform, in other cases India is leading the efforts with like-minded nations.

In the last few years, India has become a product factory of sorts for top technology firms such as Google, Facebook and Uber among others which are using the unique challenges of the country to create innovative products for the country first and then are rolling them out globally after they become successful in India. Google’s payment offering Tez or Google Pay, offline Google Maps or Youtube, Pay by cash feature in Uber or the ride hailing firm’s stripped down version of the app -- Uber Lite – which works in patch bandwidth areas are some of the recent examples of such innovations.

The official said that many of the technology platforms built by the country can be customized according to different needs and so the government will offer countries the necessary hand holding or support required to roll them out.

“If there is an interest which has been shown, so obviously, it improves our bilateral equations. It may also bring in some business for private companies since many of these public digital platforms also offer value added services and IT and product companies can gain from the business. So, it’s a win-win for both.”

The person added that there is a special interest around Aadhaar since it has led the socio-economic transformation in India and DBT has helped in removing so many ghost beneficiaries from so many welfare schemes leading to tremendous savings. So, countries are looking at bringing similar levels of accountability and transparency in their governance too, said the official adding that solutions such as e-courts, e-office, online driving license and vehicle registration system are sought after too.