Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As India began to sketch out the prestigious Group of 20 (G20) events for 2023—Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired an all-party meeting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday on this matter—New Delhi has said the country’s digital transformation is worth emulation by emerging economies.
India’s initiatives in digital public infrastructure—such as the Aadhaar Card, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT)—have been applauded at the G20 Sherpa meeting in Udaipur, with many members stressing the “need to replicate the model” in other developing countries, India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said, the media reported on Tuesday.
At the first Sherpa Meeting under India’s G20 presidency, he also cited the government’s other digital initiatives in the healthcare sector such as the Cowin app for implementing the Covid vaccination drive and the Ayushman Bharat scheme that has extended health insurance coverage to nearly 500 million people.
The four-day gathering (December 4 to 7, 2022) of the Sherpas of G20 Members, invited countries, and international organizations will set the stage for the important conversation on some of the most pressing issues, including technological transformation, green development, spotlighting women-led development, and so forth.
“There was a lot of interest and appreciation for what India has done. Everybody said that this model needs to be replicated. I think that is one story which we will definitely take forward in a big way in the subsequent rounds, he said.
About the ongoing Ukraine conflict, Kant said all countries appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on peace and harmony in the article he had penned for newspapers across the world on the day India assumed the G20 Presidency on December 1, 2022, for the year 2023.
Kant, a former CEO of India’s National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Ayog, said developing nations holding the G20 Presidency for the next three years would help the emerging economies set their narrative on the global stage.
After the New Delhi Summit in September 2023, Brazil will take over the G20 Presidency for 2024 from India, followed by South Africa (for 2025). Indonesia, which held the G20 Presidency last year, is also an emerging economy.
Kant said India’s presentation at the G20 Sherpa meeting focussed on the technological transformation and digital public infrastructure established in the country. India’s strides in providing digital identity to every citizen, opening bank accounts in large numbers, data empowerment of citizens, and fast payments, brought out what India has achieved.
Almost 55 percent of the bank accounts opened between 2015 and 2018 across the world were in India. “We have been able to bring 460 million people into the banking system and transfer benefits of over 600 government schemes straight into those accounts.”
Flagging the global debt crisis, rising inflation, and economic slowdown as key challenges before the G20, he said debt crisis in one country will have a spiraling impact on other countries.
Without peace and harmony, economic growth cannot bounce back, he said.
Kant said climate finance also figured in the Sherpa talks and would be discussed in the finance track of the G20.