India volunteers to manage global digital public infra repository

“The global DPI repository, which would be essentially the platform where all of these DPIs, will be open in open source manner, shared technology and innovation shared and be available to the whole world, will be manned by and managed by us. That is what we’ve volunteered to do,” the minister said at a briefing on the digital economy minister’s document on Tuesday.

“There’s a lot of interest in many, many bodies, both multilateral, non-governmental, governmental, that are interested in making sure that continents and countries that have lagged behind the digitization have the ability to implement this in this form or in some other form,” he added.

Chandrasekhar said that there was a global consensus for the first time on the principles of DPIs, cybersecurity in digital economy and digital skills, within the G20 digital economy ministers’ working group. He added that the definition, principles and framework on what should comprise  DPIs was also agreed upon by member countries.

DPI by India include the Unified Payments Interface or UPI, Aadhaar identification platform, Cowin platform for healthcare, Digilocker, indigenously built 4G and 5G stack are among the platforms within the digital India stack.

The minister said that UPI had become a popular DPI being adopted by other countries, including eight with which the government has inked MoU agreements. The countries include Surinam, Sierra Leone, Antigua, Barbados, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius, Armenia and Saudi Arabia.

“What we are offering today is to these countries is the technology in itself. The pieces of the India DPI a whole or part we are offering skilling, and we are also offering access to in partnership with for their own startups for their own young companies access to in partnership with the Indian innovation and developer ecosystem that supports the India DPI. So this is kind of what the proposition is,” the minister said.

Meanwhile, on the comments from Congress leaders triggered by the invitation sent to G20 delegates from President Droupadi Murmu as ‘President of Bharat’, the minister said, “I have no problem with Bharat. Our country is ‘Bharat’… Congress has a problem with everything.” 

“Our country is ‘Bharat’ and there should be no doubts about it. We have to wait and see if it will be a part of the Special Session (of Parliament),” he told ANI, when asked about speculation that the name change of India to Bharat will be taken up during the special session of Parliament.

(With inputs from ANI)

Updated: 05 Sep 2023, 03:28 PM IST