Our DPI success could guide an energy transition too

livemint.com:

Digital Economy Working Group and Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion—there is now almost universal alignment on the importance of DPI and the many ways in which it can be used. India’s diplomatic success in raising a buzz on a topic that the rest of the world had heard little of until recently has surprised many. Not only does India not have a track record of demonstrating such leadership at global fora, it has, to the contrary, remained non-committal on issues one might have expected it to take a firm stand on.

One of the reasons for this success is the deep penetration and use of DPI in the country (over 1.3 billion people have a digital identity and every month there are over 9 billion digital payments). India was not presenting a theoretical model for a digital transformation, but rather an ecosystem that had demonstrably worked at scale. Not only did this make the DPI pitch believable, it got other countries with similar problems keen to learn how they could emulate India’s success in their own contexts.

That said, it took coordinated and persistent diplomatic effort to convince delegates of the merits of a DPI approach. This effort was helped by the fact that in a world in which traditional power blocs and business as well as trade ties are being tested, many countries placed in different international contexts saw India as an honest broker. This diplomatic space is still open to India.

Countries in both the Global South and North will be willing, even keen, to see India take more of a leadership role. This is true for no issue more than climate change and the planet’s energy transition. What India will do in this regard will affect the whole world.