Digitization: The unique driver of the economy

an economy The imperative need for digitization as a way to form the foundation of almost every activity in the economy has been widely accepted. Increasing internet penetration, affordable data, technological innovation and above all, the government’s thrust on building digital infrastructure is ensuring faster delivery of services, better access and improved accountability. During the period 2014-2019, the share of India’s core digital economy increased from 5.4 per cent to 8.5 per cent of the gross value added. The digital economy grew 2.4 times faster than the overall economy during the same period. According to a recently published Reserve Bank of India bulletin, the share of the digital economy in the total economy was around 22 per cent in 2019. The main thrust of the government has been to develop Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which ensures public availability of digital components for more participatory service delivery systems, spurs market-led innovations, enables more efficient delivery of services. Facilitates cost-effective and quick incorporation and enhances user confidence by ensuring the development of more transparent systems.

Moving towards improving access, affordability, connectivity and inclusiveness, the massive impact of Digital India is now visible across the country. Considered to be a key component of the digital infrastructure, ‘Aadhaar’ has become an important tool of digital governance of this country due to its unique feature. About 1700 welfare and good governance related schemes provided by the Central and various State Governments are proof of this. The benefits of these schemes are accessed using Aadhaar. The use of Aadhaar has ensured that the benefits of various schemes reach the intended beneficiaries without any glitches. For example, computerized supply chain management in the public distribution system, elimination of nearly 47 million bogus/fake ration cards after linking data of 750 million PDS beneficiaries with Aadhaar, and automation of fair price shops not eligible to receive food grains There has been a significant reduction in the number of cases falling into the hands of those in possession. This has resulted in savings of US$ 12 billion. Similarly, the LPG Subsidy Scheme (PAHAL) has resulted in savings of US$ 8.5 billion and a reduction of 12 million metric tonnes in fertilizer sales to retailers under the Kisan Sahayata Yojana has resulted in savings of US$ 1.2 billion.

The country currently has over 1.17 billion mobile telecom subscribers, over 600 million smart-phone users and 840 million internet connections. Between 2015 and 2021, there has been a 200 percent increase in internet access in rural areas, while it has increased by 158 percent in urban areas. All these villages, which are included in the internet, have been equipped with at least 4G mobile services. This will further reduce the gap in terms of digital facilities between rural and urban areas. Efforts are also underway to make low cost feature mobile phones more powerful in terms of capabilities. Thus, it would be possible to make the digital economy more inclusive. The recently launched ‘Digital India Bhashini’ project seeks to facilitate access to internet and digital services in regional languages. The project also includes the facility of voice-based access. The project takes care of the diversity of languages ​​and aims to provide solutions in a language people can easily connect with. Digitization drives economic growth through greater financial inclusion, greater formalization, improved efficiency and improved opportunities. Some of the successful digital public infrastructure that have played a supporting role in this endeavor include Aadhaar, UPI, Co-WIN, DigiLocker, DIKSHA etc. In terms of scale, Aadhaar is now available to over 94.5 per cent of the country’s population and more than 2.2 billion Aadhaar related authentications are happening every month.

Similarly, 5.5 billion UPI-based payment transactions are done every month, a 75-fold increase over a period of last five years. There have been a total of 1.1 billion Covin registrations. A total of 140 million people have created their accounts in DigiLocker and there are 5.6 billion official digital documents available in the DigiLocker repository. 286.5 million workers working in the unorganized sector are registered on the e-Shram portal. There are 4.4 million street vendors registered on PM-SVANidhi and 12.7 million enterprises registered on the Udyam portal. The number of GST payers has increased from 7 million to 14 million during the year 2017 to 2022. All these facts are indicative of how things are shaping up.

(The writer is CEO, UIDAI)
Dr. Saurabh Garg