Over the last decade, the shift in the nature of India’s democracy, from essentially inclusive and pluralistic to increasingly illiberal and majoritarian, has brought with it a shift in how New Delhi projects its democracy activities abroad. The government continues to refer to India’s democratic credentials as one of the justifications for India’s expanding global role, notwithstanding the historically limited scope of its democracy promotion activities, as described in the previous section. This was particularly pronounced during India’s G20 presidency, where the government made frequent references to India’s status as the ‘Mother of Democracy’.
Increasingly, however, India’s democracy has been promoted through the prism of the country’s civilizational identity and technological achievements. Addressing the first Summit for Democracy in 2021, Prime Minister Modi spoke proudly of the ‘democratic spirit and ethos’ of ‘ancient India’, while also pointing to the need to ‘jointly shape global norms for emerging technologies like social media and cryptocurrencies, so that they are used to empower democracy, not to undermine it’.
India has latterly placed more emphasis on promoting global governance rather than promoting democracy. Particularly notable in this context is a pivoting of the narrative on democracy promotion to emphasize digital inclusion through digital public infrastructure (DPI) and the ‘democratization of technology’.
As noted by S. Krishnan, the current secretary of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology:
DPI has brought improved welfare disbursement through direct benefit transfers that empower citizens who previously lacked access to formal healthcare, education and banking systems, while also reducing the scope for corruption through so-called facilitation payments.
India has latterly placed more emphasis on promoting global governance rather than promoting democracy. Particularly notable is a pivoting of the narrative on democracy promotion to emphasize digital inclusion through digital public infrastructure and the ‘democratization of technology’.
Within India, an ‘India Stack’ of digital public goods has been created, spanning a triad of digital identification, payments and data management. This has included Aadhaar – a government-run biometric digital identity system launched in 2010; the Unified Payments Interface – a digital payments system launched in 2016 through the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a public-private venture; and DigiLocker – which enables secure online access to government documents. According to the IMF, citing official Indian estimates, India Stack resulted in cumulative savings for the government equivalent to 1.1 per cent of GDP between 2013 and March 2021. It has also improved financial inclusion by enabling an increase in the share of adults with access to banking services from around 35 per cent in 2011 to around 80 per cent in 2017. In this context, while India’s democracy has become less liberal, it has arguably become better governed.
India has sought to replicate the success of its DPI model globally. With four billion people not having a digital identity and 1.3 billion not having a bank account, DPI has been promoted as a means to accelerate progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This has been facilitated by such institutions as NPCI International Payments Ltd – a subsidiary of the NPCI that was set up in 2020 to facilitate payments abroad – and MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform), set up in 2018 to help governments create DPI capabilities. During India’s G20 presidency, notably, New Delhi showcased DPI as a key tool for promoting an Indian model of global governance. Among India-led G20 initiatives focused on DPI are the ‘One Future Alliance’, which aims to provide capacity-building, technical assistance and funding support for implementing DPI in low- and middle-income countries; a Global DPI Repository to share practices and experiences on the development and deployment of DPI among and beyond G20 member states; a social impact fund to help facilitate digital inclusion in the Global South; and the conclusion of memorandums of understanding with several countries to offer India Stack at no cost with open-source access.
However, India’s DPI model has also raised concerns about data privacy, as the country’s data protection laws have come under scrutiny for regulatory ambiguities and a string of data breaches. Technology is not value-neutral, which is why India’s democratic credentials and climate of openness and innovation have made it a preferred partner for Western countries in the area of technology cooperation. In this context, DPI could be subject to growing scrutiny if privacy and data protection concerns become intertwined with broader concerns about democratic backsliding in India. Digital identity, payments and data management systems are important in facilitating access to welfare payments and reducing corruption, but they also offer a means to strengthen a state’s monitoring and surveillance of its citizens.
In a global context, the fact that India’s G20 initiatives on DPI are voluntary means there is no guaranteed take-up of India’s DPI model in other countries. Another challenge is that DPI requires a vast digital ecosystem – India’s digital transformation has been enabled by factors including access to ultra-cheap telecom services and what is claimed to be the world’s fastest 5G deployment – which other emerging economies may currently lack. The G20 Digital Economy Ministers Meeting acknowledged these concerns:
Notwithstanding these challenges, DPI offers a potential area of collaboration between India and the West in the Global South, particularly as technology cooperation more broadly is a key area of engagement. The next section explores this in the context of Western support for India as a bulwark against the rise of China.
