We should harness the emotional energy of India’s DPI

UPI has over 350 banks on its network with over 260 million unique users and the network has grown to become world’s fifth largest digital-payment network by volume. CoWin has more than 1.1 billion registered users and every step of their vaccination process is captured by it. More than 500 million learning sessions have been conducted using the Diksha app and it was the key tool for teachers to impart knowledge to students during the covid pandemic. Digilocker has more than 150 million registered users. What is most heartening is that all these services are built on the solid foundations of Aadhaar, the world’s largest and possibly most sophisticated digital identity programme, involving 1.35 billion people, Jan Dhan, a massive effort that enabled as many as 478 million people to get bank accounts, and on a mobile user base of 1.2 billion across the country (‘Jam trinity’).

The quality of public infrastructure in India is nothing to write home about. We still hear news about pot-holed roads, newly built bridges collapsing and poor-quality school buildings. But the story is very different with the country’s DPI. Chances of a UPI transaction going wrong or a person not being able to download a covid vaccination certificate are low. Unlike the other infrastructure in India, the technical back-ends of India’s DPI platforms are robust and performing at very high quality standards.

The core spirit of the country’s digital economy is co-operation between the government and the private sector. This conference was a result of the combined effort of the government and Nasscom. At the conference, six prominent private-sector companies too had displayed their contributions to the strength of India’s DPI (the open protocols and digital public goods underlying which are referred to as the ‘India stack’).

The technology on display at the conference was as good or better than that in other parts of the world. New technological developments like conversational artificial intelligence and machine learning were the forces driving much of what was on display in the hall. It is clear that India has travelled much ahead from the time it was largely seen overseas as a land of snake charmers and elephants.

There standing in that G20 conference hall, I felt proud of our country’s progress on the digital front. Benefits accruing even to less-fortunate citizens of our country, thanks to the democratization of technology, were obvious. I felt very optimistic about the technological future of our country. But at the same time, I also felt there was something amiss in this whole DPI game.

Our technocrats have done an excellent job of building world-class but affordable digital infrastructure. But we have failed so far to effectively communicate these great achievements on the DPI front to a wider audience. These technological solutions have not been brought together to create a unified new image for the country. This is the lacuna I find in India’s DPI programme. If ordinary citizens do not know about the excellent technological foundations of our DPI programmes, I would not blame anyone. Because it is not easy to explain the intricacies of those sophisticated technologies.

But there is lot more to communication than that.

Communication is not a rational process of citing scientific facts and statistics. Good communication is all about emotions. It is about real-life stories from ordinary people’s lives.

The G20 conference was held in Kumarakom, Kerala. The state’s tagline ‘God’s Own Country’, which encapsulates the essence of all its tourist attractions and infrastructure, is an excellent example of good communication. What is most appealing about the tagline is that it perfectly captures the emotions a tourist would experience while visiting any part of Kerala. Similarly, various DPI programmes can evoke several positive emotions in many a user’s mind. This emotional energy generated by various DPI programmes in every nook and corner of this country should be harnessed by using the services of India’s best communication professionals.

The Apollo 11 mission that let humans put their feet on the moon’s surface in 1969 established US hegemony during the Cold War. The sophistication of its engineering industry also helped rebuild war-torn Germany. In terms of technological sophistication, scale and impact, India’s DPI is as good or better than many other technical projects around the world. Just like in the case of America’s lunar mission, communication about India’s DPI could help uplift the emotional quotient of the whole country.

A few weeks back, I had written an article in this column about the tendency of many youngsters in our country to migrate to other countries in the belief that the grass is greener on the other side. Years of colonial rule had dented confidence in our abilities. Now there is no need to argue whether the glass is half full or half empty. While standing in the conference room in Kumarakom, I was convinced that the glass is clearly more than half full. We just need to communicate that fact more evocatively.

Biju Dominic is chief evangelist, Fractal Analytics, and chairman, FinalMile Consulting.