India’s drive to globalize Digital Public Infrastructure: Time to take stock

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Among the main thrusts of India’s G20 presidency was the globalization of our approach to Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). By the time our presidency ended, at least a dozen countries had signed MoUs with the Indian government to assist with assessing what DPI they could deploy.

At the time, we had all patted ourselves on the back for having secured so many international commitments—not realizing that mere agreement to consider adopting DPI can hardly be treated as a sign of success. Without evidence of actual deployments, we should not have assumed that our DPI approach had actually gone global. Soon after we handed over the baton of the G20 presidency to Brazil, it became evident that they were not going to embrace our DPI agenda with as much gusto as we would have liked.

They were pursuing their own priorities, and if we wanted the idea to survive, we would have to promote it ourselves. Over the course of 2024, thanks to the concerted efforts of many, the Global North slowly began warming to the idea. Various developed countries made commitments to fund DPI rollouts, and the Quad went so far as to announce a set of principles for the development and deployment of DPI in third countries.

When DPI emerged as a priority area in the Global Digital Compact, the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Technology launched a ‘safeguards’ initiative to develop a set of foundational and operational principles with which all DPI development had to conform. Finally, it seemed like the world was willing to go along with what we were proposing. But despite these positive signals, it is actual deployments that count, and, as anyone who has tried it will tell you, rolling out DPI is a non-trivial