Epublic infra revolution making India high-productivity, mega economy: Nandan Nilekani

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Infosys cofounder and chairman Nandan Nilekani, who has spearheaded India's digital public infrastructure (DPI) revolution. India is moving from being an «offline, informal, low-productivity set of micro economies to a single online, formal, high-productivity, mega economy,» said Nilekani who was founder chairman of the Aadhaar project speaking at an event in New Delhi. «India's 'techade' is a different model of growth.

Nobody has seen this model so they can't understand it. This is really going to lead to much more growth, much more equity because everybody is included, an opportunity for every Indian.» He said India has the «DPI advantage» in a world that is growing hotter, older and more geopolitically fraught. «The whole globalisation that we saw for 40 years is now going through a lot of challenges,» he said, but India's advantages as a democratic country and a young country with a high growth rate are well known.

The pace of DPIs has also changed, he said, referring to the time taken for Aadhaar coverage and UPI transactions to reach population scale. «Technology and DPI accelerated financial inclusion and allowed us to go from 80% of people not having bank accounts to 80% of the people having bank accounts in a matter of nine years. And then, in six years, India went from a cash economy to the world's largest platform for digital payments,» he said.