In the country of a population of 1.5 billion people, Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has played a crucial role in identity verification, financial inclusion and public service delivery in the last one decade. In 2009, the UIDAI-Aadhar project was launched to create unique digital ID based on biometric data to offer authentication as a service. Almost 90 percent of India’s population signed up for Aadhar within a few years and it is now being used for opening bank accounts, filing income-tax return, receiving ration on subsidies, buying a mobile-sim etc. Later on, products like DigiLocker to store digital version of various documents, electronic Know-Your-Customer (KYC) service, and digital signature on demand (e-Sign) were developed in addition to Aadhaar. It further led to the rolling out of Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Direct Payment Transfer and CoWin Application, which managed the vaccination programme in India. Aadhar has become a bonafide proof of identity residing on the cloud and it can be used for the purpose of identification of any individual required for any service delivery transaction.The government is now working towards integrating over 20 new services in the DPI. Also, India has recently signed memoranda of understanding with eight countries offering them India Stack (collection of open APIs) and DPI at no cost and with open-source access.
At the same time, there have been multiple concerns raised by civil society and academia about biometric reliability specially for manual labourers, data breach and cyber risks, misuse and financial frauds, privacy violation and surveillance etc. In this context, this talk will offer an insight into India’s experiments with DPI with a focus on its philosophy, approach and citizen centric concerns.
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83646431588?pwd=UXk4aGFsTWtGenRmRkVVbk03MVFxZz09
RECORDING : Please note, this event will be recorded and will be available after the event for an indeterminate period under a CC BY -NC-ND license. Audience members should bear this in mind before joining the webinar or asking questions.
