Perspective: A DECADE OF DIGITAL INDIA | 01 July, 2025

0:00 [Music] Namaskar viewers. Hello and welcome to Senset TV. I'm Tina Ja. You're watching Perspective. Today we mark a historic milestone, a decade of digital India. Launched in 2015, what began as a government initiative has today become a people's movement. From realtime payments to remote governance from Aadhaar to ONDC, digital India has reshaped the way 140 crore Indians today live, work, think and connect. So it's not just been a decade of digital transformation but a decade of empowerment, inclusion and in many ways

0:47 innovation. India has today become a global leader building public digital infrastructure that the world now is adopting. So exploring this transformational journey and what lies ahead in the next chapter of the digital revolution in India is what we're going to get perspectives on from two distinguished guests joining us on the program. It gives me immense pleasure to welcome on this edition of perspective Mr. Abhishek Singh additional secretary in the ministry of electronics and information technology and director general of NIC. He's in fact been one of the key persons at the helm of India's digital transformation. Mr. Singh always a pleasure to welcome you on sensitive TV and I'm also delighted to welcome Mr. Shahed Sharma co-founder of Ispirit Foundation. Mr. Sharma glad to have you

1:32 with us on this telecast as well. Uh Mr. Singh allow me to begin the program today with you and first uh talking about the execution and the impact because that's where you've played a key role. So help us and our viewers understand today as we mark a decade of uh digital India. What do you see as the most gamechanging part of the digital India program that was launched in 2015? See the most game-changing path if you want to define is that digital India has become mainstream. It's not something which is confined to only people with access to smartphones, devices, connectivity or skills to do that. It's truly inclusive. It's available to each one and everyone. Projects like UPI is being used by street vendors, vegetable

2:20 sellers, small businesses, everyone. Aadhaar has given identity to everyone which ensures that their financial inclusion is ensured. The 510 million 51 cranhan accounts which are opened the direct benefit transfers which really empowered people. the ODC e-commerce democratizing the way e-commerce is run digilocker enabling paperless governance. So all our projects are truly empowering in the sense it's not confined to elite few. It is reaching out to the millions of people across the country. It is helping India getting more connected, India getting more digital, our economy, the unorganized sector coming into the organized sector and laying the foundations for building Vikit bharat as

3:06 we move on the journey towards that. So when we talk about the significant transformations and uh uh India's DPI few important uh highlights that that come to mind are platforms like Aadhaar co-win also the digil locker something that's being hailed as a landmark initiative uh talk to us about how India's digital platforms are not just being studied globally but also being adopted by uh several countries and what is it that makes India India's digital stack so unique and so scalable. What is it that has generated so much interest in India's digital public platforms? Like the way it has transformed governance, the way it has empowered people, the way it has led to to

3:52 creating value in almost every sector whether it's a farmer or a student or a small businessman everyone has benefited that. So the whole world looks at it is a model for transforming governance, bringing in efficiency, ensuring inclusion and creating economic value. So that's why many countries which are which are looking at improving their own administration, their own governance look at adopting these systems. So we have countries the global south who are looking at adopting ADAR through initiatives like MOSEP. We have countries like uh developed countries like France which are adopting UPI. Brazil has built up similar solution as we have of UPI. They call it Pix. So there are countries across the ecosystem across continents including developing

4:38 and developed countries who are looking at India's model of digital transformation. Shahhat will speak more about the technical approach towards regulation. How consent becomes the focus of building services and ensuring that that data that is shared for giving any service is used only for that purpose and for nothing else. Our digital personal data protection act has also become like a model act which kind of other countries are looking at replicating looking at adopting our uh projects like Bhashini which is enabling a language layer over all the services that we're building is again example that many countries are looking at for for empowering their own people in enabling services in in the mother tongue of people in voice enabled

5:24 services. So this is being uh looked at with great interest by several countries in G20 summit that we hosted two years back. We showcased many of these technologies and that led to many countries signing with India in adopting India stack solutions in their own countries and we are constantly working with all such countries which are looking at learning from India or building similar solutions that we have built in India. Certainly uh Mr. Dr. Sharma, we'll also get your perspectives on what makes India's DPI model unique from the big tech le models developed by the west. But before that, your thoughts on the journey since we're marking a decade of digital transformation. Uh since your foundation has also played a significant role in the way India stack

6:10 has uh come up to be, how do you look back at the last 10 years? What does this journey this transformational journey to be precise uh represent to you? You know, I think for India, it marks a turning point. It gives us self-confidence that if we set our sight on something, we can make it happen. And the whole world will notice. We are only 17th of the world's population. But believe it or not, we do more than 50% of the digital transactions of the world. And these are not just commerce transactions that UPI and ONDC are talking about. These are DBT transactions that Abhishek just mentioned and we are leaders in DBT transactions and for DBT to work

6:56 somebody has to pay taxes. We are leaders more than 50% of the world's taxpaying transactions happen in India by by volume. So so in all facets of digital we've been able to make a difference. And why has that happened? There are two things to keep in mind. First is that behind all this there is a deeper so it's so you know like a yoga which has yog as 84 asans but there is a common yog sutra behind it and if you really want to get the full benefit of yoga then you must follow yoga asan and yog sutra similarly in our digital journey there are DPI sutras there is this common thinking that is behind

7:41 everything that we do which is that it'll be modular It'll be interoperatable. It'll be based on design principles that we have cleanly outlined. It'll be regulated using technolal regulation. There are bunch of things that are part of this. So when this combination of new way of thinking, new source, new principles, new protocols and its manifestation that suits the common Indian that combination is unique. Nobody in the world has thought of it like this. Then obviously when world wakes up 10 years later and say this country which was not so prominent in digital is now the hero of digital we must find out what they're doing and when they find out of course there is a desire to replicate it and therefore

8:28 there is traction as Abhishek just mentioned in many many countries you know a variety of countries we have you know developing countries we have middle inome countries uh like Vietnam We have high inome countries in the west. All of them are looking at this and they take different parts of India stack but nevertheless they're very interested in our approach to digital which has been a breakthrough approach from the traditional approach that existed before. Absolutely. And if if you talk about the access and inclusion something that both of you also spoke about in the first round of questions uh Mr. uh so when we look at the numbers and this is where the prime minister also asserted that this transformation in the

9:14 last decade or so does not just reflect in data and in the dashboard it reflects in the way people's lives and 140 cr Indians lives have been transformed particularly so in terms of access and inclusion a lot has been achieved now the next big question is how do we make sure that this interaction between the uh the government and the citizens is more meaningful and especially in context of a meaningful participation from the women who we want as leaders from the marginalized communities from perhaps those who who still uh uh remain on the sidelines and and are waiting to be part of the mainstream. If you look at the entire digital India program, our whole approach has been to ensure that

10:01 inclusion is always the focus. Like when we started building e digital government services immediately we thought of like how do we ensure that people who don't have access to to smartphones or computers or connectivity uh they live in remote areas or they don't have skills to access that how will they access services so towards their towards including them 500,000 common service centers have been set up across the length and the country so there is a CSC center which is there within 1 kilometer of in every village of the of this country. So persons can go and get assisted success. Then the other key focus was that if we have to really empower people, we have to build services in different languages. And now with artificial intelligence and the

10:46 India mission projects like Bhashini, what we are saying is that the remaining 500 million people like almost 90 to 97 million people 90 97 K people are already connected on the internet. But the remaining 50 cr people who are yet to be connected they will require a voice interface to access services. So we are building that interface also bringing services like like there's a project called loss that we implement from ministry of rural development that is not as well known as the as other flagship projects in digital India that is empowering almost 80 lakh self-hel groups which are there in this country. So women who are saving money their entire operations are digitized through that project and they are able to do transactions they're able to get loans through that project. If you look at a

11:33 project like portion tracker almost 12 lakh angadi workers daily enter data about nutrition at angadi centers across the length and breadth of this country. So again these are very these services empower people at the last mile whether it's newborn children whether it's pregnant women whether it's self-help groups whether people living in remotest quarters of the countries so digital India ensures that everyone is covered everyone is included and the the whole barrier the the whole the pitfalls in governance that we used to have when we used to say that money doesn't reach the last mile it's it was like money was flowing from center to villages through a pipe which are perforated and there was a lot of leakages. So all of it has

12:19 been eliminated because we are able to reach to the last mile. We are able to bring in policies which ensure that whatever due is there whether it's subsidies whether it's scholarship pensions whether it's any right of the children whether PMKan amount that is transferred directly to the bank accounts this including every farmer every woman every self-help group everybody worker every beneficiary last mile has been the hallmark of this entire plan and inclusion will again turn out to be our biggest achievement when we look at the implementation of digital India certainly and and in a way we can say uh uh Mr. Sharma that digital India has ended the monopoly of the middlemen. So it's not just saved lacks of crores of rupees for the government

13:05 but also enabled those who were earlier on dealing with this kind of problem. It has enabled them to come up to the national platforms. Uh but but what what is the next step? what is the kind of innovation that may be required in the days to come to perhaps uh uh enhance this kind of direct citizen government or citizen national platforms engagement to encourage it further. So many things have come together because many things have come together it has now become possible to think of MSME lending in a new way cash flow lending which is for people who don't have any collateral they have only their cash flow to offer uh as collateral and that is going to explode the pilots that have happened with Gem Sah have been very successful Sidi has done GST SAH and soon the MSME

13:53 ministry is going to launch I think in the coming weeks MSME SAH and and many more. So this will be very important. There's another aspect that I must talk about inspired by India stack and this thinking of public private. This is not public or private. It is public and private in almost everything that has happened. There's a place for both. You know the government has provided the infrastructure and in many cases the innovation has been done by the private sector. UPI is a great example. Most of the apps that we use are coming from the private sector but the infrastructure and the protocol that we have is coming from the public public you know the government. So this combination has allowed us to reimagine how will we do telecom equipment and particularly in

14:40 mobile telecom equipment and telecom stack has turned out to be a success story and for the first time when we used to be completely dependent on foreign players Huawei Ericson, Nokia and Samsung for a telecom equipment that is beginning to change and Indian companies some of them small some of them startups some of them bigger ones are beginning to serve the Indian market And it is quite likely that we will be able to go global in a very big way. So this innovation model of public and private the new innovation model is proving its worth in areas beyond digital. And why is this important as we look ahead? You know you know the geopolitics of the world today. and technology sovereignity, strategic autonomy is going to be important for us

15:27 not just in traditional defense areas but in many other technologies because all of these technologies have a role to play in the future of India and many of them are dualuse technologies. So in all of these technologies including what Abhishek drives as the AI mission it gives us an opportunity to rethink how can we emerge as potential leaders in the future. How can we have strategic autonomy in these areas? How can we be one of the three or four countries in the world that will play a meaningful role to do this while we serve our own population? So this formula that we are talking about is is going to be the real legacy of the digital revolution. Digital revolution is an unfinished revolution. I think it'll play its role

16:14 in the coming years. But when we look back 10 years from now, it will be this formula, this playbook that we have got that we can apply to new sectors that will also turn out to be important and also I'll end with this saying that look it has given new energy today you know Abhishek will will confirm this when we meet these young engineers they're no longer making a beline to go to the west you know when you know I could go back 25 years and say 80% of the good engineers would leave India and go to the west. Today very few less than 20% go to the west. They want to be part of India. They want to build technology in India, serve the Indian market and create global companies out of India.

17:01 This is going to be our our cultural change that we will get from this revolution that we have seen. Certainly two very important aspects that have emerged uh from the intervention made by uh uh Mr. Sharma. So I'll take those to uh Mr. saying one is of course about the India AI mission the new centers of excellence. So the question is about what is the next frontier for the digital India in the coming 10 years or so. But before that since you also spoke about the opportunities and how a lot of how digital India has has sort of created a lot of opportunities for the youngsters back home who do not have to now go to the west in terms of uh uh opening up a lot of avenues. So give us a clear picture of how the last 10 years have opened up numerous opportunities

17:48 for the youngsters aspiring to go to the west for better opportunities to stay back, stick around, explore the newer avenues because of this program and especially in tier 2, tier three cities. What have we done that we were not doing earlier to support digital skilling in these areas? And if if you may also include the grassroot level like uh digital India has of course been transformational but along with other policies whether it's for startup India the startup mission that was launched by the government around the same time then the whole effort towards ease of doing business providing expanding the educational opportunities expanding the network of IITs expand making more investments in research and development

18:33 setting up initiative like Sandan research foundation all has led to led to kind There being many opportunities like like Shah mentioned if we compare to 25 30 years back the options for many of us who graduated from IIT was to either go abroad or look for civil services and other options or go for marketing jobs but today entrepreneurship has become a big big opportunity when I go to IATS now when I interact with youngsters they are not looking for regular jobs 9 to 5 jobs they are looking for creating value there's funding support that is available from schemes within the government whether it's the tide scheme in matey or the samarid scheme or the startup India scheme there are measures which allow startups to bid for government projects there are hackathons

19:21 that are held uh there is a opening up of sectors like defense opening of the ID scheme in defense or the space research opening up of those sectors so the number of opportunities that have opened up are much more than it what is to be and then if you couple it up with the proactive schemes of digital India which provides the common infrastructure ure common platform so that everybody does not need to invent the wheel. They can use the identity layer or the payments layer or the dig or the data layer that is made available or if you look at the AI mission, the compute platform that is being provided or the data set platform that is being provided. So all those things become a place where entrepreneurs, young engineers, young minds can make that their playground and with the funding coming from VCs and all they who are also looking at opportunities in India.

20:06 India becomes like a very active space for innovation for entrepreneurship. So that has given a lot of wings to the minds of the young engineers and they are ready to fly and they are ready to create value within India. We are seeing like in India AI mission when we published a call for proposals for foundation models many students who were like doing well in the valley and also studying in Stanford and all they're also wanting to come back to build solutions here. So that's the kind of positivity that has come in with the with the government providing the enabling ecosystem the funding support coming in and startups and young engineers being able to build value. So I think that's again a shift that has happened in the last 10 years which makes uh the future looks promising with the and India being actually being ready

20:52 to harness the potential that we always talk of the demographic dividend that we have the young population that we have the young talent that we have. Uh so so that's the opportunity that's like unfolding and this will contribute a big way in the in the years to come in making India a developed economy. It certainly has over the last decade and the kind of transformational impact that it has had. So taking on from what the prime minister said uh Mr. Singh about how it started with the government initiative back in 2015 but it's become a people's movement and that's why the change is much more visible not just in terms of data but also in terms of the lives how it's impacted. If we talk about the road ahead, what should be our collective priorities in the next decade?

21:39 See like one key hallmark of the feature in fact Shhat mentioned about the public private partnership like how the digital India is a story of not only government intervention but also the active participation of the private sector but I would also want to add a third dimension like it's a public private and a not for-p profofit sector. In fact, there's a lot of civil society or not for-p profofit organizations like ice spirit foundation which represents they all joined hands and it would join hands with a mutual feeling of trust. It's not that if somebody from outside the government is suggesting something to to people within the government we will not take their advice. So this whole change of mindset within the government especially in the digital space uh kind of led to we being able to do things much faster and much better than what we would have otherwise done. And if we

22:25 continue this whole of India approach like very often within government we call it a whole of government approach but we call continue on this whole of India approach in trying to take positive suggestions and advice from whichever sector they are coming in with from the private sector or from the not for-p profofit sector and take it build it into our policies. we will be able to architect a digital strategy and a transformational strategy which will be much more realistic, much more practical and much more uh capable of delivering the uh objectives that we are trying to do. So I think uh my biggest excitement and hope is that we'll be able to move on in that direction with the collective strength of Indians across whether in India in any sector or abroad and build up digital build upon on the digital

23:12 foundation that we have built to build up the future uh future India that we all dream of. Absolutely. So when we moved from the Sarcari stack to the samad stack u Mr. Sharma the transformation was quicker. It was easier for citizens to adapt to the change because for decades people were skeptical about whether Indians will be able to switch to technology. And I I still remember uh those sound bites being played about the skepticism that was actually spread about whether UPI will be uh will will people be able to adapt so easily to this technology. But of course 140 crore Indians proved everyone wrong because the approach moved from circari to samaj. So in the s similar manner we now want to move from digital governance to digital

23:58 leadership. Of course we've begun to uh take steps in that direction. But how can that speed be accelerated? Uh uh and what role can the innovators and the entrepreneurs pray play in that uh journey? See first I have to acknowledge that it takes two to tango as they say right and I think you know officers like Abhishek have been very instrumental right because they've been willing to break the mold and think in a new way and think what has happened here what has happened here and this is not unusual if you look at our long history you know different states have different cultures but there's the same cultural theme that is running across all of India right isn't it we have one civilizational state with manif manifestations that are

24:44 different. Dijatra is with ministry of civil aviation. UPI is with ministry of finance. There are other things like identity you know are with uh with mighty some parts of data dipa are with mighty there's another part of geospatial with is with ministry of dst no matter where it belongs the soch behind all of this is the same see this has not happened before this idea in this technology world that we can have a single kind of a underpinning so behind it although the manifestations are different earlier everybody would be involved in turfism and trying to do it their way and only their way this has not been the case this has been an act of collaboration that I don't think we

25:31 have seen in recent past in the country as Abhishek said it's a whole of country it's a whole of nation approach and I think this then allows us to aim for bigger things and the bigger things is why just digital why can't we do it in new technology areas Does that matter to us? Obviously AI is there. Obviously quantum is there. Why can't we be big in drones? Why can't we be big in so many other meaningful areas that are going to be important for the life of the nation as we go forward? So this gives us a template that I think we will be able to use as we go forward. We will look back to this. I like to use a sports analogy. you know once we started winning in badminton because of uh you know the

26:17 academy that was set up that gave us confidence that if you can defeat Chinese in badminton you know which was considered an impossibility then why can't we do well in other sports and that gave us the the opportunity and today we have a ko India movement that is making a difference you see our Asian medals tally it's like this so I think this is a start of something bigger in the country and this whole of nation, whole of India approach involving all the stakeholders being relentlessly focused on our own people and to add value to our Indian citizens who would not be getting this value from any other way of doing things. These are elements that will hold us in goodstead and we

27:03 will look back and remember this moment for that more than anything else and especially in context of uh the prime minister's assertion uh time and again that we are moving from India first to India for the world and that is what our focus on that is what all our initiatives are towards this big change that is happening is that you see amongst all of us we are comfortable being rule makers in the digital world rather and you know rule takers and the fact that we can do this. I'm actually sitting in Geneva today in a standards body meeting where we are you know people are interested in the rules that we're going to establish standards we going to establish for the world based on our India stack. So the question is this shift that we are able to bring

27:49 about will will give us the confidence to do it in many more areas as we go. Certainly. Uh so if digital India was a significant leap of the past decade something that we refer to as India's decade uh Mr. Sing two uh very quick questions. What is your message to the young innovators because they are the ones going to drive the next decade uh of digital uh transformation but at the same time uh what are the safeguards uh that that uh one must be cautious about because with AI data digital ID evolving fast there are risks that we must guard against as we move into the next decade the next chapter of digital India. So like as we have already mentioned a lot about the opportunities which are there to build on the existing platforms

28:35 and the existing opportunities which are there but whichever startups and whichever entrepreneurs are planning to build for India. Two cautions that one should take. One should not uh do shortcuts. One should uh think through what we are trying to do. Think for the audience for whom we are designing a system. Plan it well. Architect it well. Focus attention on that. And number two make systems which are secure when we are dealing with IT systems cyber security and data protection become very very important aspects. So compliance with existing regulations, the dig the DPDB act becomes important. Building secure applications becomes very important. Like on one hand we do we do take pride that we have so many digital transactions happening every day. Billions of transactions happening day.

29:20 So many digital payments happening every day. But at the same time there's always the risk of cyber crime. There's always the risk of cyber security. So we have to be mindful of those risks. We have to build secure systems. We have to do a lot of effort as much as we do for for uh promoting digital transactions. We have to do as much effort which agencies like I4C are doing for preventing cyber crime for making people be aware of the risks which are there in the digital world. ensuring that harassment, bullying, uh p child child pornography, child sexual abuse these things are restricted and whosoever indulges in that is acted uh against promptly and quickly as per the law as per the IT act. Then there are issues of deep fakes, issue of misinformation. So while artificial intelligence other

30:05 technologies give us a big opportunity on one hand at the same time we also need to build tools and frameworks which ensures that that misuse of such tools is uh is not there while we are promoting innovation and while we are driving such solutions restricting misuse or abuse also becomes as important. So all the whether this government department or whether this IT companies or startups when we are building such solutions we also have to be aware of the flip side and take necessary actions to avoid any any ill result in in in the in the future. Absolutely. I think what's important and something that the prime minister also said uh uh in an article that he's written marking a decade of digital India is that what the focus of the

30:51 young innovator should be on bending technology that unites that empowers and that uplifts because that is what is going to propel this journey accelerate this journey of the past decade into the next frontier of digital India with that we'll have to wrap up the conversation time allows me to take up only that much on the program thank you Mr. Singh Mr. Sharma for joining us uh with your valuable insights talking to us about uh this wonderful and transformational journey of digital India. To you viewers thank you very much for your time as well. [Music]