'Data for development' will be integral part of overall theme of India's G-20 Presidency: PM Modi

Bali, November 16

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The digital transformation should not be confined to a small part of the human race and its greater benefits will be realised only when digital access becomes truly inclusive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the G-20 summit on Wednesday.

Modi said India’s experience in the past few years has shown that if digital architecture is made widely accessible, it can bring about socio-economic transformation.

In a session on digital transformation, the prime minister said the principle of “data for development” would be an integral part of the overall theme of India’s upcoming G-20 Presidency.

India will assume G20 Presidency for one year, beginning December 1, 2022.

“Digital transformation is the most remarkable change of our era. The proper use of digital technologies can become a force multiplier in the decades-long global fight against poverty,” Modi said.

“Digital solutions can also be helpful in the fight against climate change – as we all saw in the examples of remote-working and paperless green offices during the covid-19 pandemic,” he said.

The prime minister said these benefits would be realised only when digital access is truly inclusive and when the use of digital technology is really widespread.

Modi said digital use can bring scale and speed and transparency can be brought into governance.

“India has developed digital public goods whose basic architecture has in-built democratic principles. These solutions are based on open source, open APIs, open standards, which are interoperable and public,” he said.

“This is our approach based on the digital revolution that is going on in India today. Take, for example, our Unified Payment Interface (UPI),” he said.

Modi said over 40 per cent of the world’s real-time payment transactions took place through UPI last year.