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Informist, Friday, May 8, 2026

 

--CEA Nageswaran: Need to build digital infra, but need digital inclusion

--CEA Nageswaran: Senior citizens continue to be out of digital inclusion

--CEA Nageswaran: Interoperability of welfare schemes across states need work

--CONTEXT: Comments by CEA Nageswaran in an ICRIER event

 

NEW DELHI – India has done a remarkable job in advancing digital public infrastructure, but despite its sophistication, it is not the same as digital inclusion, Chief Economic Adviser to the government V. Anantha Nageswaran said Friday. He said that a significant portion of India's population, especially senior citizens and those in areas of poor connectivity, are not digitally included and significant work remains to be done to include them under government's digital public infrastructure push.  

 

The government has pushed for digital public infrastructure to secure its direct benefit transfers but with a section of population being out of the digital net, the last mile success in delivering direct transfers remains unachieved. 

 

"Building the infrastructure is a necessity, but not sufficient," Nageswaran said at an event organised by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, University of Queensland and the Australian Government. "The first great challenge of ensuring that those who most need services are also those who can most easily access them through digital means, that remains an ongoing effort," he said.

 

Data governance is the second frontier, Nageswaran said at the event which focussed on India's direct benefit transfers. As more and more domains of public service delivery come to the realm of data sharing and digital records, it needs to be seen who can access that data to avoid errors or misuses. "At this stage, what is needed is not paper and data or recording, but they need to be placed in a technical architecture," he said. 

 

India, which runs large direct benefit transfers, connected individuals to the states and Centre in a direct and verifiable manner using Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhar-based verification, and mobile connectivity to avoid leakage in fund flow. Through these three routes, called the JAM Trinity, welfare benefits began to move straight into bank accounts.

 

Nageswaran said that the third item to work on is interoperability of digital public infrastructure across states, lines of work and borders. "The new data governance systems are increasingly well-innovated, but the quality and completeness of state-level digital infrastructure varies extensively. Since a significant portion of services delivery in health, education, land records and local literacy happens at the state level, the quality of citizen experience is often determined more by state capacity than by central infrastructure," he said.

 

The final issue is cyber security, the government's top economist said. "The security pillar in this ongoing regime requires sustained institutional attention. Larger and more interconnected systems have larger attack surfaces and the sophistication of threats evolves continuously," he said. While India has made investments in this area, retaining the completed task routine has failed, he said. 

 

All said, India's progress in digital public infrastructure has led to fiscal savings, Nageswaran said. "The new age of fiscal savings have to do with the liquidity reflecting the difference between what was spent previously on schemes with high leakage and what is spent now on direct, verified losses," he said. "Every rupee saved to more precise targeting is a rupee that can be re-invested in expanded coverage or in other public goods without requiring additional borrowing or taxation."   End

 

Reported by Priyasmita Dutta and Sagar Sen

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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