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India's public digital infrastructure boasts 138 million digital identities and over 10.5 billion online transactions per month - truly impressive figures, according to an EFE report from New Delhi on 6 November. India hopes to export its model; however, concerns have also been raised about the high level of data centralisation and the serious issue of data breaches.

The unofficial term for this infrastructure is the "India Stack", which refers to a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that the Government of India has been developing since 2009.

One of the most striking aspects of India's digital revolution is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which allows instant money transfers. From the counters of large shops to the humblest roadside stalls, QR codes for UPI are everywhere. Raj Kumari, a fruit vendor, told a reporter, "I started using UPI more than a year ago. customers often ask to use it, but still nearly half of them pay in cash."

The situation is somewhat similar in rural areas, where even some beggars have opened UPI accounts in case a passerby claims to be out of cash, although this is not common.

Kumari explained that fruit wholesalers do not accept electronic payments. Moreover, according to a report by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) in 2021, only 411 TP3T of Indian men own a smartphone compared to 251 TP3T of women.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has termed India's API system as an open source gift to the world. Speaking at the G20 meeting in Bangalore, India, he said, "This is to ensure that no one is left behind."

However, the success story told by the Indian government contrasts with the scepticism raised by cases of massive data theft. Most recently, the data of 81.5 million Indians was found on the internet following a massive data breach at the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Prateek Wagler, policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation, told EFE that although India recently passed a data protection bill, it is effectively null and void due to a lack of regulations to enforce the law.

For this activist, the problems with India's digital public infrastructure are fundamental. He laments, "I understand that digitisation can help address service delivery failures, but it doesn't solve all the problems."