New Delhi, March 1
India’s sprawling digital public infrastructure received a glowing endorsement from billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday as he praised the country’s “great” digital network, reliable and low-cost connectivity, and said this will be the cheapest 5G market.
Under the G20 presidency of India, a session on ‘Building resilient and inclusive economies- the Promise of Digital Public Infrastructure’ was held on Wednesday in New Delhi, where the Microsoft co-founder spoke of India’s digital identity Aadhaar, its payment infrastructure, and rapid strides that the country has taken in bringing more people into formal banking system.
“India in particular, by laying the groundwork for digital public infrastucture starting with identity system, allows people to build on top of that. And to make financial access and financial payment an element of that in a trusted way allows for an incredible variety of applications. We are just at the beginning of this. We are seeing incredible ingenuity about using this, and it is in many different sectors,” Gates said speaking at the event.
Gates – who is the co-chair and trustee of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – said Covid-19 across the world had demonstrated the value of digital payment systems for facilitating emergency relief payments.
“No country has built more comprehensive platform than India…Because of the pioneering investment including creating the basic Aadhaar identity, India was in the lead in getting out (relief) payments…during the pandemic,” Gates said.
India can be “such an example” for other countries, he said.
“As I said the Indian system is more ambitious in its breath, the digital vision from the beginning included areas like helping government with its tasks, or enabling exchange of educational materials,” he observed.
