SCO member states adopt India’s proposal on Digital Public Infra

Member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) support the adoption of Indian digital public infrastructure such as Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface, DigiLocker and CoWin, electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday.

“Thec met today and unanimously adopted India’s proposal for developing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as the right way for deploying digital technology among member states,” Vaishnaw said in a statement after chairing the meeting.

The SCO grouping includes Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and India.

DPI is important from the perspective of making sure that technology is democratized, Vaishnaw said. “There was also a need felt for interoperability between different systems being developed by the member states and the body recognized the need for setting up an organization for setting common standards for interoperability of digital systems among member states,” he said.

Approximately 74 billion UPI transactions worth ₹125.94 lakh crore were conducted in 2022, National Payments Cooperation of India data show. In 2021, the UPI platform handled more than 38 billion transactions, amounting to ₹71.54 lakh crore. Using CoWin, India’s Covid-19 vaccination app, 2.2 billion doses have been administered so far.

“I would urge all fellow members of SCO to assess, evaluate and adopt India Stack and benefit from this digital public infrastructure,” Vaishnaw said.

India Stack, which details these digital assets, is a “set of open APIs and digital public goods that aim to unlock the economic primitives of identity, data, and payments at population scale. Although the name of this project bears the word India, the vision of India Stack is not limited to one country; it can be applied to any nation, be it a developed one or an emerging one”. The government has previously asserted that several nations have shown an interest in India Stack.

India also shared with SCO member states about investing $3 billion to take mobile connectivity to villages in remote areas and $5 billion to bring broadband connectivity to all 250 thousand village council, the ministry statement said.

One of the key outcomes of the India Stack is UPI, which has transformed the payments system in India, pushing the financial inclusion metric by 5% compounded annual growth rate, according to Kazim Rizvi, founder of the Dialogue, a technology think tank.

“The export of UPI to other countries has grown significantly, with the international arm of NPCI partnering with countries such as the UK, the UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Bhutan, Nepal, etc.,” Rizvi added. “The recent signature by SCO member states to adopt India’s proposal for developing digital public infrastructure as the way forward for deploying digital technologies in members is a significant recognition of India’s efforts towards having digitally inclusive growth at the global scale.” PTI