Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that India's upcoming G20 chairmanship will focus on bridging the digital divide, especially in developing countries, and ensuring greater benefits from digital technologies and transformation.
Addressing a session on digital transformation at the G20 summit in Bali, Modi urged other G20 leaders to pledge that they will work together for digital inclusion in the next decade.
"The principle of 'data for development' will be an integral part of the overall theme of our presidency 'one earth, one family, one future'," he said.
“In India, we are publicizing digital access but internationally there is still a huge digital divide. Citizens of most of the developing countries of the world do not have any kind of digital identity. Only 50 countries have digital payment systems," he said, speaking in Hindi.
Can we together take a pledge that in the next 10 years we will bring digital transformation in the life of every human being, so that no one in the world remains deprived of the benefits of digital technology.
Modi said that during its G20 chairmanship in 2023, India will work jointly with partners in the grouping of the world's 20 largest economies to achieve this objective.
Indonesia, the current G20 chair, will hand over the chairmanship to India at the conclusion of the summit in Bali.
India will host the next summit in September 2023 in New Delhi.
Digital issues and reform of multilateral financial institutions are among the focus areas of India's G20 chairmanship.
Modi described digital transformation as "the most remarkable transformation of our era" and said that appropriate use of digital technologies can be a force multiplier in the decades-long global fight against poverty. “Digital solutions can also be helpful in the fight against climate change – as we have all seen in the examples of remote-working and paperless green offices during Covid,” he said.
These benefits will be realized only when digital access is truly inclusive and when the use of digital technology is widespread. "Unfortunately, so far we've only seen this powerful tool harnessed by simple business parameters, tying this power to the profit and loss books," he added.
Modi said the G20 leaders are responsible for ensuring that the benefits of digital transformation are not confined to a small section of mankind.
“India's experience of the last few years has shown us that if we make digital architecture inclusive, it can bring about socio-economic transformation. Digital use can bring scale and speed. Transparency can be brought in governance.
These solutions are based on open source, open APIs and open standards that are interoperable and public. "This is our approach based on the digital revolution going on in India today," he added.
Citing the example of India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), he said that last year more than 40% of the world's real-time payment transactions were done through UPI. India opened 460 million new bank accounts using digital identities, making the country a leader in financial inclusion. He said that the open source CoWIN platform ensured the success of the biggest vaccination drive.
