IMF praises India’s digital transformation, calls it 'world-class infrastructure'; Asks other nations to learn from it
July 10, 2025
  • Read Ecopy
  • Circulation
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
Organiser
  • ‌
  • Bharat
    • Assam
    • Bihar
    • Chhattisgarh
    • Jharkhand
    • Maharashtra
    • View All States
  • World
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • North America
    • South America
    • Africa
    • Australia
    • Global Commons
  • Editorial
  • International
  • Opinion
  • Op Sindoor
  • More
    • Analysis
    • Sports
    • Defence
    • RSS in News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Economy
    • Culture
    • Special Report
    • Sci & Tech
    • Entertainment
    • G20
    • Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav
    • Vocal4Local
    • Web Stories
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Law
    • Health
    • Obituary
    • Podcast
MAGAZINE
  • ‌
  • Bharat
    • Assam
    • Bihar
    • Chhattisgarh
    • Jharkhand
    • Maharashtra
    • View All States
  • World
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • North America
    • South America
    • Africa
    • Australia
    • Global Commons
  • Editorial
  • International
  • Opinion
  • Op Sindoor
  • More
    • Analysis
    • Sports
    • Defence
    • RSS in News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Economy
    • Culture
    • Special Report
    • Sci & Tech
    • Entertainment
    • G20
    • Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav
    • Vocal4Local
    • Web Stories
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Law
    • Health
    • Obituary
    • Podcast
Organiser
  • Home
  • Bharat
  • World
  • Operation Sindoor
  • Editorial
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Culture
  • Defence
  • International Edition
  • RSS in News
  • Magazine
  • Read Ecopy
Home Bharat

IMF praises India’s digital transformation, calls it ‘world-class infrastructure’; Asks other nations to learn from it

India’s journey highlights lessons for other countries embarking on their own digital transformation

by WEB DESK
Apr 6, 2023, 08:00 pm IST
in Bharat, Technology
FacebookTwitterWhatsAppTelegramEmail

In a working paper titled ‘Stacking up the Benefits lessons from India’s Digital Journey’, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that India has developed a world class digital public infrastructure to support its sustainable development goals with its journey having lessons for other nations embarking on their own digital transformation.

The DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) refers to a set of shared digital building blocks such as applications, systems and platforms powered by interoperable open standards and specifications.

India Stack is the collective name of a set of commonly used DPIs in India. It consists of three layers-unique identity (Aadhar), complementary payment systems (UPI, Aadhar Payments Bridge, Aadhar Enabled Payment services) and data exchange (Digilocker and Account Aggregator).

“Together, they enable online, paperless, cashless and privacy respecting digital access to a variety of public and private services. The benefit of this investments is felt across the country and served India well in the pandemic”, the paper said.

The India Stack has been used as a platform to foster innovation and competition, expanding markets, close gaps in financial inclusion, boost revenue government collection and improve public efficiency.

The IMF continued by stating that using this digital infrastructure, India was able to quickly provide support to an impressive share of poor households during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The Indian Government also played a catalytic role, acting as an anchor client and establishing institutions to ensure continuity in India’s Stack operations.

The Working Paper further revealed that using a digital backbone, allowed India to scale its vaccine delivery quickly and overcome challenges such as large scale internal migration.

In addition, the paper lauded the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMDY) which was launched by Narendra

Modi government and said sound policies led to a competitive, open and affordable telecommunications market and lowering of cost of mobile data by 90 percent lead to a jump in data usage.

Further, the IMF through the working paper said that demonetisation led to a greater use of other forms of payment such as the UPI (Unified Payment Interface).

The digital payments are now ubiquitous and UPI accounts for 68 percent of all payment transactions by volume.

The Aadhar helped facilitate the transfer of social safety net payments directly from the government treasury accounts to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts helping to reduce leakages curb corruption and provide a tool to effectively reach households to increase coverage it said.

The use of digital payments has expanded the customer base of small merchants documenting their cash flow and improving access to finance. Roughly, 4.5 million individuals and companies have benefited from easier access to financial services through Account Aggravator since it was launched in August 2021 and its adoption is increasing rapidly, the paper said.

Digitalisation has also supported formalisation of the economy, with around 8.8 million new taxpayers registered for the GST between July 2017 and March 2022, contributing to buoyant government revenues in recent years.

The Government position is streamlined. For example, citizens can access documents issued by the state and central governments through one platform. The India Stacks have digitised and simplified the Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures lowering costs of compliance from $12 to six cents.

The decrease in costs made lower income clients more attractive to service and generated profits to develop new products. India Stacks development is guided by a foundational building blocks approach across the ecosystem.

This process involves unbundling the components of the solutions to a set of problems and identifying a common core. For a large and diverse nation like India, the building blocks approach provides those closer to the problems with basic tools to create tailored solutions.”

In India, interoperability was supported through open standards, allowing anyone to utilise the functionality provided by India Stack. These principles are applied to other DPIs in education and health, including the Covid-19 vaccine and distribution platform (CoWIN).

By using the DPI to provide social benefits, the government encouraged to take up by individuals and gave service providers the comfort of access to a large client base. The government also encouraged the use of technologies as utilities and created a category of not for profit companies with a public purpose.

The National Payments Corporations of India, an initiative between the RBI (Reserve Bank Of India) and the Indian Banks Association which unites and operates retail payments and settlement system is example of such company.

“This is one strategy to strike a balance between the curbing monopoly rents and providing the services effectively and efficiently, without the various human resources and procurement challenges that often plaque the large government projects.

The tax administrative also played a pioneering role in rolling out a Tax ID (PAN) and using an innovative PPP (Public Private Partnership) from where important lessons were drawn to develop Aadhar.

The IMF Paper further explained in 2014, there was a push by the government to provide access to a no-frills, a low cost bank account that doubled the coverage of individuals with bank accounts. This scheme has identified and targeted the financial underserved section-(especially rural women).

In late 2016, India enacted a demonetisation policy where large number of currency notes were invalidated. The in-house development of Aadhar supported by the system integration firms was feasible in India as due to high level capacity in IT within its domestic labour market.

This allowed the India to avoid vendor lock in and lack of interoperability and created a need for sufficient resources and capacity to continue building and developing the infrastructure.

These type of resources and knowledge sharing initiatives mean that the government with the shallow IT capacity to implement the DPI.

To access the full functionality of the India Stack, the individuals need to have access to a smartphone and a bank account. For other countries with low adoption of smartphones and lack of access to banks, payments systems based on mobile money that can be used on a feature phone are the dominant form of digital payment,” the paper said.

It said to maximize India Stack’s potential there are challenges to be addressed.

“Despite significant progress, digital literacy remains low in India, and represents a barrier to engaging with DPI-based solutions. The digital divide appears along familiar geographic, gender and income lines.

A mere 14.9 per cent of rural households have internet access, compared to 42 per cent among urban households.

Women are more likely to be digitally illiterate, particularly among low-income groups. The authorities are working to address this issue through various training initiatives as well as public access outlets, where users are supported to access government services.”

The IMF paper said DPI can also help support efforts to make social assistance more resilient and adaptable.

“For an example, the Aadhaar can be used to exchange data between various schemes across states.

Finally, leveraging the DPI, India could improve significantly the timelines, quality, and coverage of the general government fiscal reports, enhancing at the same time fiscal transparency for its citizens, a key issue to improve public sector accountability,” the paper said.

The IMF Senior Resident Representative to India, Luis.S. Breuer said in a tweet that India’s digital public infrastructure is transforming people’s lives.

Topics: Digital IndiaIndian Monetary FundIndia’s Digital Journeydigital public infrastructuredigital JourneyIndiaIMF
Share1TweetSendShareSend
✮ Subscribe Organiser YouTube Channel. ✮
✮ Join Organiser's WhatsApp channel for Nationalist views beyond the news. ✮
Previous News

Hindu man marries a Muslim woman under the ‘special marriage act’, gets shot by wife’s brother, sustained severe wounds

Next News

West Bengal explosives seizure case: NIA arrested Merazuddin Khan and Mir Mohammed

Related News

Tibetan Spiritual leader Dalai Lama

Succession plan of the Dalai Lama and its impact on India

Operation Sindoor Shattered Chinese Plans to Invade Taiwan by 2027

Operation Sindoor shakes Indo-Pacific: How Pakistan defeat exposed Chinese weapons & shattered Taiwan invasion plans

Representative image

From Palm Leaves to Pixels: Gyan Bharatam Mission set to digitise 50 crore pages of Indian manuscript treasure

Kaladan Project to be operational by 2027, says union shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal

Kaladan project to boost regional connectivity: India-Myanmar corridor to link Northeast with global sea routes by 2027

PM Narendra Modi

Five Nation Tour: Modi to visit Namibia, 1st by Indian PM trip in 30 years to secure minerals, energy ties, expand UPI

LR-LACM developed by DRDO under Nirbhay missile project

Turkey fears India may offer LR-LACM missile to Greece, escalating strike threat amid Cyprus row & defence cooperation

Load More

Comments

The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Organiser. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.

Latest News

Image for representational purpose only: Courtesy Aajtak

Bihar: Manifold increase in ‘residency certificate’ applications in Kishanganj after ECI begins ‘voter revision drive’

Tibetan Spiritual leader Dalai Lama

Succession plan of the Dalai Lama and its impact on India

PM Modi sets global records with foreign parliament speeches, highest state honours ; Exceeds all Congress PMs combined

Visuals from attacks that happened across Bharat on Muharram 2025

Wave of Violence Mars Muharram 2025: 25 incidents of attacks and vandalism by Islamists across Bharat

(Left) ADG Law and Order Amitabh Yash (Right) Chhangur Baba

Love Jihad Racket: ATS squad of Uttar Pradesh Police obtains seven-day remand for Chhangur Baba

Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar addressing the inaugural Annual Conference on the Indian Knowledge Systems in New Delhi

Western constructs were paraded as universal truths, there was an achitecture of erasure and decimation: VP Dhankhar

DMK, Church leaders unveil statue of Stan Swamy

Tamil Nadu: DMK, Church leaders unveil statue of Stan Swamy; attempt to portray Maoist as human rights activist

A representative image

Bihar: ECI voter revision drive to continue; SC asks commission to consider Aadhaar, ration cards as ID proof

Mushtaq Ahmed Bhat

Once a Militant, now a Saviour: Mushtaq Ahmed Bhat eliminates 300 terrorists

Tamil Nadu: Madras HC questions closure of 121 complaints over Ponmudi’s abusive remarks on Hindus; case continues

Tamil Nadu: Madras HC questions closure of 121 complaints over Ponmudi’s abusive remarks on Hindus; case continues

  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Cookie Policy
  • Refund and Cancellation
  • Delivery and Shipping

© Bharat Prakashan (Delhi) Limited.
Tech-enabled by Ananthapuri Technologies

  • Home
  • Search Organiser
  • Bharat
    • Assam
    • Bihar
    • Chhattisgarh
    • Jharkhand
    • Maharashtra
    • View All States
  • World
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • North America
    • South America
    • Europe
    • Australia
    • Global Commons
  • Editorial
  • Operation Sindoor
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Defence
  • Culture
  • Sports
  • Business
  • RSS in News
  • Entertainment
  • More ..
    • Sci & Tech
    • Vocal4Local
    • Special Report
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Health
    • Politics
    • Law
    • Economy
    • Obituary
    • Podcast
  • Subscribe Magazine
  • Read Ecopy
  • Advertise
  • Circulation
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Policies & Terms
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Refund and Cancellation
    • Terms of Use

© Bharat Prakashan (Delhi) Limited.
Tech-enabled by Ananthapuri Technologies