The report was first published on the India Mobile Congress website in October 2023.
Over the past decade, India has seen transformative moments that have propelled its digital revolution onto the global stage. The collaboration between the public and private sectors has been a driving force to foster innovation, improve service delivery, and prioritize user-centered experiences. These initiatives have evolved digital infrastructure and given rise to disruptive ICT innovations, adaptable regulatory frameworks, supportive policies, and an unwavering commitment to customer-centricity. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications, Government of India, has played a central role in this remarkable journey, serving as a pivotal force in facilitating digital connectivity.
Against the backdrop of current and emerging development challenges in both developed and developing economies, India’s extensive digital connectivity and pioneering Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) programs stand as beacons of progress in the nation’s digital economy. These DPIs are now well-positioned to serve as valuable benchmarks to craft resilient and inclusive digital service delivery models in other economies. Their significance is particularly evident in how they can advance financial and digital inclusion, with a special emphasis on individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and offer valuable lessons to address the unique socioeconomic issues faced by both developed and developing nations. This report highlights crucial Indian case studies across diverse areas, such as identity, financial services, healthcare, education, and agriculture. It underscores the potential for these cases to be replicated and adopted to benefit developed and developing nations alike.
The press release was first published on the PIB website on 7th February 2024.
As a step towards Digital India, Shri Sanjeev Chopra, Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India launched a pilot to on-board the Fair Price Shops (FPSs) in Una and Hamirpur districts of Himachal Pradesh on the Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC). The pilot was launched virtually in 11 FPSs – 5 FPSs in Una and 6 FPSs in Hamirpur districts. This is the first time when Fair Price Shops are on-boarded on ONDC.
Speaking on the occasion, Shri Chopra said this landmark initiative adds to the continuous efforts of the Department in transforming the Fair Price Shops. This effort aims at providing additional avenues of income generation for FPS dealers along with enhancing beneficiary satisfaction.
Furthermore, he underlined that this initiative provides numerous benefits for FPS dealers including visibility in the digital marketplace, access to a larger customer base beyond NFSA beneficiaries, and the ability to compete on an equal footing with large retailers and e-commerce platforms. Additionally, beneficiaries who face difficulties in making online purchase can approach the FPS dealer to make online orders on their behalf.
He highlighted that the success of the pilot being implemented in Himachal Pradesh will serve as a model for statewide and nationwide adoption in the future. He also appreciated the support of MicroSave Consulting (MSC) in deploying this pilot program.
After the launch event, a workshop in physical mode was organised for the FPS dealers in Una & Hamirpur districts. The workshop explained on how to catalogue products, service orders, and commission structure on ONDC etc.
Ms. Anita Karn, Joint Secretary (PD), Shri Ravi Shankar, Director (PD), Shri Mitul Thapliyal, Partner, MSC and Shri Saransh Agrawal, ONDC were also present during the launch event.
As a result, many of the communities most vulnerable to climate change are excluded and unable to participate in the digital revolution. This deprives them of opportunities to access critical information, financial services, key inputs, and collaboration. We need to enlist, train, and deploy a range of community-focused players to help vulnerable communities use the growing array of valuable digital tools to optimize their locally-led adaptation (LLA) planning, implementation, and governance. These players could include the staff of community-based organizations, financial service providers with reach into remote rural areas, agricultural extension workers, agriculture input dealers, and cash-in and cash-out (CICO) agents. Indeed, this is probably the only way we can scale up LLA to the levels required by climate change’s rapidly emerging and increasingly debilitating impacts.
Can AI help?
It is immensely appealing to think that AI can play a role in the development, implementation, and oversight of LLA strategies. However, the development of these strategies necessarily requires the identification, analysis, summarization, and communication of a diverse array of information, datasets, and complex ideas. Effective LLA strategies must consider policy and regulation, climate science, ecology, geography, agriculture, health, financial services, and gender, among other factors. AI could potentially play an important role in distilling the key elements and critical success factors from this daunting range of variables.
Yet the desire to apply AI to complex problems that have historically remained elusive or irrelevant to most modern technology or digital developments has often made the situation worse. The UC Berkley School of Information has already shown how artificial intelligence bias affects women and people of color. Much of this bias is because of feedback loops built onto the most readily and abundantly available data to train the algorithm.
The school notes, “AI is created using a feedback loop. Real-world experiences shape data, which is used to build algorithms. Those algorithms drive decisions affecting real-world experiences. This kind of circular reasoning means that bias can infiltrate the AI process in many ways.” These biases will be amplified further for people on the analog side of the digital divide.
If we are to close the digital divide, we will need a highly cautious, context-specific strategy that considers the needs, interests, and capabilities of local participants. The data on which AI is trained is crucial, so if we want to deploy it to assist with LLA, and indeed many development challenges, we must:
Avoid the imposition of external or top-down solutions and strike a balance between the use of digital technologies even as we respect and acknowledge local expertise, culture, and values;
Ensure local players, particularly those without the required infrastructure, expertise, or money, can access and use digital technology;
Resolve the ethical and legal concerns about data ownership, permission, and use, and ensure the reliability, security, and privacy of digital data and systems.
So, what are the implications for digitally-enabled, locally-led adaptation?
Chatbots and natural language processing (NLP) present valuable possibilities to improve access to information for LLA strategies. However, another key limitation amplifies the challenges outlined by the UC Berkeley School of Information: The datasets used to train NLP systems often lack comprehensive coverage of local dialects, native languages, and regional cultural knowledge. When people are stranded on the analog side of the digital divide, it also reinforces that exclusion as algorithms are built and trained on data from those already connected to the digital world. Thus, such algorithms exclude the voices of those who are not connected. We see an instance of such exclusion in the fact that 99% of the world’s online content is limited to only 40 languages.
Limitations in AI technology highlight the digital divide, as experienced by MSC in our recent projects. In India and Bangladesh, we used AI to analyze voice recordings. Despite being trained in the local languages, the NLP systems, developed with commonly available digital voice data, struggled with the dialects and accents of marginalized groups. Additionally, when we attempted to use AI to anticipate responses from rural women for survey follow-up questions, all AI systems failed, as they did not understand these women’s unique challenges.
The guidance offered by large language model AI systems is likely to be either too general or simply not applicable to the local context of many climate-affected communities. Furthermore, the feedback mechanism in the supervised learning process becomes less effective, as it is challenging to measure and correct the extent of inaccuracies or irrelevance in such generalized or inappropriate solutions. These challenges are mutually reinforcing and could lead to lower adoption rates and trust issues regarding the information provided by AI interfaces.
A good example of this arose in MSC’s work with an AI-driven agri-advisory app, which we have been testing with farmers in Bihar. There, we found the following issues:
Compatibility of the application: We found a wide range of mobile phone models and Android versions, which vary depending on the farmers’ ability to afford them. The lower configuration of the handsets and older versions of Android affect the performance and functionalities that the farmer can avail through the app. This served as an important lesson for us for other digital projects, including the Digital Farmer Services (DFS) platform that MSC has been implementing in Bihar.
Local dialect: The sensitivity of the voice detection functionality to local dialects is an issue. The app struggled to identify keywords, which led to instances where the farmer needed to provide multiple inputs.
Maturity of the apps: In the current state of the app, the quality of the prompts decides the quality of the output. If the prompts are not written properly, the farmer gets basic and generic advice, which is not helpful. The app’s responses may not be relevant in some instances, such as when the farmer does not know of a new pest or disease or if its name is in a local dialect that the app cannot understand. Such examples highlight the LLMs’ limitations.
Appropriate learning data: We wanted to conduct a similar experiment in Bangladesh. Yet, despite the app being already available in West Bengal, which shares a common language with Bangladesh, the cost to retrain the app for Bangladeshi agricultural policies, climatic conditions, value chains, and markets was surprisingly high.
Moreover, significant computing and storage resources are clearly needed to train these models, considering the large volume of data produced in local contexts across a region or geographic area. Additionally, these models may need to be enhanced with more neural nodes to preserve the accuracy of the results. Consequently, the cost of these resources is a major concern—particularly given the remote and “low-value” nature of many vulnerable communities.
Finally, the privacy and security of data significantly increase the challenges. Institutions and governments are still struggling to develop rules, laws, and frameworks for the responsible and ethical use of AI. Given this, communities or local government officials involved in LLA strategies are unlikely to trust a digital platform with their personally identifiable information, especially when they are uncertain about the accuracy of its results. Additionally, while people are still vulnerable to traditional phishing and malware attacks, the emergence of AI-generated deepfakes further complicates and intensifies these security issues.
Conclusion
AI could play an important role to support development initiatives in general and LLA in particular. However, as in all other cases, any AI-based solution or intervention is as good as the relevance and authenticity of the data it is trained on. We will need to make very conscious efforts to include the voices of vulnerable communities, typically on the analog side of the digital divide, if we are to realize the potential of AI. Failure to do so will widen and deepen the divide. This is a challenge on which MSC is working—stay tuned for updates!
“Farming has become such a lottery now that the weather gods are no longer our friends. Everyone in the village has sent their sons away to earn in the city—we have no other way to make ends meet,” sighs Krishna Lal as he laments that “Everything has changed.”
Climate change events impact smallholder farmers in direct and indirect ways. Firstly, extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts, threaten smallholder farmers, particularly in regions where rain-fed agriculture is prevalent, such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These events can lead to crop failure, reduced yields, and loss of income, which affect food security. Additionally, changes in temperature and precipitation can impact livestock and reduce feed quantity and quality, and water availability, which further exacerbates the challenges of smallholder farmers. Moreover, changing growing seasons and the prevalence and dispersal of pests and diseases present additional challenges for farmers.
Climate change will continue to affect food production worldwide. As pera report by the World Bank, 80% of the global population most at risk from crop failures and hunger from climate change are in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Crop production in South Asia is expected to decrease by 30% by the end of this century. The World Bank report highlights that the most vulnerable populations are those who are already poor and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
Digital technologies can facilitate, speed up, and scale LLA planning and the governance functions of monitoring, evaluation, and learning to refine and optimize adaptation initiatives. These technologies can provide various benefits, such as easier and real-time access to information, peer-to-peer information exchange, digital recordkeeping, performance-based payments and carbon credits, and the integration of scientific data and analytics into local plans. As the Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRAg) working group of the CIFAR Alliance notes, digital solutions in various forms can also significantly improve market functioning and the delivery of productivity-enhancing solutions for farmers. These technologies open up new pathways for the adaptation and transformation of agri-food system value chains. Furthermore, many of these technologies are already available but remain hopelessly underused.
Agents as gateways to the digital world and catalysts of change
About 16% of the global adult population lacks access to a mobile phone. For the foreseeable future, 409 million men and 440 million women lack access to basic feature phones, let alone smartphones. As such, we need alternative approaches to ensure they can access digital services and thus provide the data to train algorithms and large language models. Cash-in and cash-out (CICO) agents used by mobile money service providers and banks to deliver financial services can play a pivotal role in the transition of underserved communities to Internet or app usage. They can act as mentors to promote this shift.
The use of agents in this capacity enables shared hardware and allows assisted, on-demand Internet access without the need to buy bulk data. Thus, it grooms future generations of smartphone users. Investments are crucial to establish profitable models that incentivize agents to offer these essential services.
Likewise, microfinance institutions’ (MFIs) staff and agricultural extension agents (AEAs) can be catalytic to promote the development of LLA strategies and plans. MFI staff’s involvement can also ease the collection of data and promote a better understanding of credit risks associated with lending to climate-impacted communities to facilitate lending to these communities. AEAs can provide technical inputs into the rural communities’ adaptation plans, which can strengthen their strategies to respond to climate change along agri-food value chains.
Digitally-enabled locally-led adaptation
CICO agents, MFI staff, and AEAs in climate change-vulnerable areas can emerge as nodal points to help community-based organizations develop LLA plans. With Internet access, they can provide inroads to key data and insights for the participatory planning process and then ease the management and governance to implement these plans.
This would entail these agents being reinvented and incentivized as “catalysts of change,” who would use and facilitate access to various digital technologies for underserved communities. These technologies can be deployed to support and scale LLA planning and monitor the implementation of those plans for performance-based payments. AI-enabled online forums in local languages can offer opportunities for communities to share knowledge, discuss challenges, and co-create adaptation strategies. Mobile platforms can be used to deliver educational content on adaptation practices suitable for local conditions.
These can be complemented by mobile phone surveys, either through IVR, currently being tested by MSC, or voice mobile, such as CATI, as used by 60 Decibels, to collect local climate and environmental data directly from the community. Community-based and operated sensors can collect localized climate data for analysis and planning and complement climate change predictions from GIS and machine learning models. Such machine learning models can be used to predict current and future flood susceptibility under different climate change scenarios. These predictions can be validated and strengthened by satellite and drone service providers, such as Ushahidi, Cropin, and Amini. This could allow communities to use digital mapping to collaboratively plan and visualize adaptation strategies with the use of simple simulation tools to help them understand the potential impacts and benefits of different strategies and provide inputs to national policy and AI models.
As adaptation plans are implemented, local language weather apps, such as TomorrowNow, can be used to provide communities with essential alerts on imminent weather changes, which would enable them to prepare and respond better. Mobile money services can be used to deliver funds in a transparent and efficient way for adaptation projects. Moreover, digital recordkeeping canensure the accountable use of resources and create important digital trails that promote lending by formal financial service providers. In addition, digitally enabled carbon credit tracking and trading platforms, such as CaVEx, can allow farmers to receive financial support for their adaptation.
Digital technologies can help monitor and govern the implementation of adaptation plans and enable smart contracts to reward the achievement of performance goals. Communities can report progress and challenges in real time through community-based and operated sensors, satellite and drone services, and feedback platforms, and provide insights and recommendations to improve adaptation initiatives and local and national climate adaptation policies.
A focus on accessible and practical digital technologies for rural communities and the agents that serve them can significantly enhance LLA strategies’ effectiveness. However, these digital tools must be aligned with the local context, language, and needs, to foster community participation, knowledge sharing, and sustainable adaptation practices. Particular care must be taken to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable people are encouraged and enabled to participate in the planning and monitoring exercises.
Although untested, we believe that agents’ involvement in LLA planning can offer them additional revenue streams and provide real use cases for poorer, vulnerable people in remote communities. This can help often excluded vulnerable people start their journey into the digital world and deliver data to inform and train AI tools. These LLA-driven use cases provide us with opportunities to offer tangible value to these hard-to-reach communities, increase their resilience, and show them the benefits of digital tools. Many vulnerable communities comprise smallholder farmers who can benefit from digitally-enabled value chains and financial services. Climate change and the LLA response to it can bridge the digital divide for these farmers and others currently stranded in the analog world—if we encourage and enable it.
UNEP estimates adaptation costs for developing countries will increase to USD 160-340 billion annually by 2030 and USD 315-565 billion by 2050 (UNEP, 2022). This is five to seven times higher than the USD 49 billion of global adaptation flows in 2019-2020.
Climate risk primarily emerges at the local level. Effective adaptation measures tailored to local needs and priorities have proven successful when implemented close to the affected communities. This success is achieved through a combination of nationally planned and community-based autonomous adaptation (Quevedo et al. 2019). Therefore, it makes sense that subnational jurisdictions that are directly impacted should take responsibility for adaptation. National governments and public funds provide the regulatory and policy environment, oversight, and finance for the initiatives with participation from philanthropies and the private sector. At the same time, subnational levels of the government design, plan, and implement adaptation measures alongside affected communities— an approach known as locally-led adaptation.
This approach resonates with two core principles from the general decentralization theory (see figure below):
Subsidiarity: If services can be provided at multiple levels, they should be entrusted to the level of the most local government. This level should align with the region that benefits from those services.
Correspondence: A governing body’s jurisdictional boundaries that provide a service should match the region that benefits from that service (Martinez-Vazquez 2021).
Financial resources for effective locally-led adaptation
Effective locally-led adaptation strategies prioritize the local communities’ decision-making authority to address climate change. They also provide the resources and support needed for informed climate adaptation investments. However, many adaptation strategies remain top-down and are typically managed by donors, major intermediaries, and central governments. A study by WRI revealed that only around 6% of 374 community-focused interventions incorporated local-led components, such as local decision-making. This highlights how we must urgently address the barriers to locally-led adaptation.
A notable exception is IIED’s “The good climate finance guide for investing in locally-led adaptation.” However, finance remains the key missing ingredient in successful adaptation. Insufficient financing hinders the scale-up of localized solutions, capacity building, and technology adoption. It harms project sustainability and risks unequal distribution of adaptive capabilities across communities.
Several challenges hinder the shift toward financing locally-led adaptation. These include complex funding distribution mechanisms, unclear procedures for planning, consultation, and decision-making, inconsistent and hard-to-access data on budgets and international aid, and limited resources. These challenges prevent governments from examining if local or global financing supports local adaptation. However, broad principles have already been articulated.
Seven essential principles to effectively finance locally-led adaptation
Subsidiarity: Decisions should be made as close as possible to those most impacted. This ensures designs are tailored to specific areas, local relevance, and enhanced accountability toward the most vulnerable.
Convergence: No single action can address all climate-related risks. However, convergence is under-documented, which makes its assessment challenging.
Robust decision-making: Local stakeholders need to understand climate risks and uncertainties thoroughly. This ensures both current climate risks and generational insights inform their choices.
Patient and predictable: Long-term perspectives in climate finance are vital.
Flexibility: Adaptive programming is essential, given the unpredictability of climate change.
Risk-taking: Early investments in local institutions unfamiliar with the management of climate finance are essential. But it should focus on data, technology, and capacity building from the outset.
Predictability: Local stakeholders should be able to rely on consistent or future financial support (Coger et al., 2021).
However, the private sector’s role has been largely overlooked
The private sector has significant potential to meet Africa’s climate finance needs. However, nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) from governments rarely discuss its role. Public funding alone will not be sufficient, given the magnitude of investments needed and current and future constraints on public domestic resources in the continent. However, most current climate financing in Africa is from public actors with limited finance from private players. It accounts for up to 87%, which amounts to USD 20 billion with limited finance from private players (Guzman et al 2022).
IIED’s highly regarded primer on locally-led adaptation financing has few examples of private-sector funding for LLA. WRI’s recent paper concluded that “with supportive financial structures in place, the private sector can scale up investment in climate change adaptation—and in fact could play an essential role in closing the substantial adaptation finance gap” (WRI, 2023).
Research indicates that Kenya has made significant efforts to prepare itself for climate finance, as evidenced by its climate-focused policies, laws, and institutions. However, the country has room to improve, especially in how well it acknowledges and bolsters the private sector’s role in this arena (Kiremu et al., 2021). The World Bank’s 2022 Climate and Country Development report for Bangladesh that LLA can help generate financing for MSMEs for climate resilience.
International and national public sector funds alone will fail to provide the enormous sums of money required to support adaptation and build vulnerable communities’ resilience worldwide. For example, the African Development Bank notes that “to close Africa’s climate financing gap by 2030, approximately USD 213.4 billion will need to be mobilized annually from the private sector to complement constrained public resources”.
Blended finance combines public and private sector investments. It offers a promising avenue to reduce risk and the weighted cost of capital. Additionally, it allows the use of capital to catalyze innovation and market transformation at scale. The public sector can offer initial risk protection through investments, equity capital, or improved credit conditions. It includes national governments and multilateral development banks, such as the (EIB). If development partners and multilateral banks focus on equity rather than debt, they can prevent an increase in developing nations’ debt load (IMF’sBo Li at EIB Group Forum 2023).
The private sector holds the most significant amount of capital. We must align this capital with climate and sustainable development objectives. Although public finance is smaller in scale, it remains vital since policymakers can control it directly. Additionally, it funds public goods and services that the private sector may not support. When used correctly, public finance can boost private investment as it can promote markets, drive innovation, and minimize risks (Amerasinghe et al. 2019).
For example, a profound disconnect often occurs between financial services and the communities most vulnerable to climate change. These communities are often poor and remote, so financial service providers cannot serve them profitably. Moreover, these communities often depend on smallholder agriculture and are thus subject to covariant risk—a problem that climate change amplifies. This makes them less attractive to institutions that offer credit or insurance services. The digital revolution and the advent of digital financial services could play an important role to address these challenges. Nonetheless, public and philanthropic funds will likely be needed to manage risk through first-loss guarantees alongside other innovative approaches.
The implementation of effective risk-sharing mechanisms requires a thorough understanding of the specific risks involved in a project and potential investors’ risk appetite. Blended finance arrangements can mobilize significant private capital to support locally-led adaptation at scale through the judicious application of these tools.
India has always been unique and special in so many ways—including the challenges and solutions for the effective financial inclusion of its huge population. In 1989, after I left my home in Bangladesh, I spent seven of the happiest and awe-inspiring months of my life on a visit to India for less than USD 10 a day, which included the costs of all the train and bus fares. I traveled from Darjeeling to Amritsar, from Leh to Kanyakumari, marveling at the sights, sounds, and kindness of those I met. This trip was the culmination of years of a profound, inexplicable obsession with India that started well before I knew anything of reincarnation. And it only fueled the fires of my passion for the country, its people, geography, history, and cultures.
Amid the joy and excitement, I often came face to face with old Bharat. I waited for an entire day for my turn to call my parents from a post office in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. I spent five hours trailing from counter to counter to fill out a series of old multi-column ledgers in a hot and dusty bank branch in Puri on the Odisha coast to cash some travelers’ cheques.
After years in the remote mountains of the Philippines and in Kenya, I returned to India in 2004 on a mission to assess if the market-led approach of MicroSave (now MSC) could add value to the new joint liability group-based microfinance institutions. How India had changed and yet remained the same. Liberalization had transformed the cities, while the villages remained exactly as they were.
While much of the world followed the Grameen Bank model of joint liability groups (JLGs), India charted its own course. The country’s unique approach to financial inclusion started with visionary NGOs, such as MYRADA and PRADAN. Within a few years, the Government of India saw the potential of the self-help group (SHG) model and moved to support and scale it through NABARD, which launched the SHG Bank Linkage Programme (SBLP) in 1992. Senior NABARD officials who were kind enough to meet me in 2004 assured me that India had solved the problem of getting financial services to poor people with SHGs.
Yet despite such optimistic claims, other models emerged from SEWA, BASIX, and many organizations influenced by the JLG model’s success across the border. Another government agency played a crucial catalytic role in the growth of these microfinance institutions (MFIs). SIDBI’s Foundation for Micro Credit was led by Brij Mohan, who provided invaluable support to the growing movement. By 2004, it was clear that microfinance was set to revolutionize financial services for poor people in India.
Support a consortium of banks that lent to MFIs with loan portfolio audits;
Run strategic business planning workshops for many of the leading MFIs, including Bandhan, Spandana, and Grameen Koota;
Nurture and grow more than 20 nascent MFIs in the country’s underserved remote rural areas for the ABN Amro Bank Foundation;
Train hundreds of senior management executives of MFIs and banks on a range of key issues, which included market research, product development, process analysis, risk management, staff incentive schemes, and strategic marketing;
In 2012, MSC won the HSBC-ACCESS Microfinance Award for Support Organizations, which Manoj and I received at the Access Inclusive Finance India Summit in Delhi. This meant a huge amount to the MSC team—we pulled them all into our Lucknow conference room for celebrations and passed the trophy around from hand to hand in thanks to everyone on the team who had put so much energy and effort to make us worthy of the recognition.
However, one of the key attractions of coming to India was its technological prowess. In Africa, MicroSave helped beta test the M-PESA mobile money solution. And indeed, I served on the original M-PESA Steering Committee. This experience gave me a clear vision of the future, and I was quite sure that India would be the first to realize its full potential. At my first Access Inclusive Finance India Summit, I met several thought leaders who worked on digital solutions, including Samit Ghosh of Ujjivan and Abhishek Sinha of Eko.
These conversations confirmed my belief that India would lead the digital revolution in our sector. Eko was, and indeed still is, a real trailblazer, and MSC is privileged to have worked with this remarkable organization from its inception to the present day. This can be seen in the growth of digital payments, which are poised for further proliferation.
The graph above shows that most of this growth has come from the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Using UPI requires a smartphone and thus excludes many low- and moderate-income people. MSC has been working with NPCI on USSD- and IVR-based payments for feature phones, which can potentially unlock further significant growth in digital payments.
As India’s policy and regulatory landscape evolved at a blistering pace to drive digital financial inclusion, MSC pivoted, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s support, to help:
Business correspondent network managers navigate the ever-changing RBI directives and the correspondent banks’ demands and commission structures;
Telcos develop and improve UX/UI for low-income people;
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) increases the speed of Aadhaar enrollments;
Assess and accelerate the scaling of “no-frills” and PMJDY accounts for the Ministry of Finance;
The uptake and rollout of the Ujjwala program to provide liquid petroleum gas (LPG) stoves to poor households to protect women’s health and free up their time;
Startups develop technologies for low- and moderate-income people through the Financial Inclusion Lab at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad;
In-depth monitoring and assessment of the national and state governments’ PMGKY response to the COVID-19 epidemic, in which we provided a dashboard for use by the Home Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office; and, most recently;
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the power of the payment rails built as part of the “JAM Trinity.” For example, millions of women could receive four payments of INR 500 from the government a few weeks after the pandemic started. This was extraordinary: a tribute to a government and civil service that genuinely cares about the low-income masses—and a public and private sector banking and technology industry that provides the services they need.
The result has been remarkable, as measured on the UNDP multidimensional poverty index (see graph). From 2005-06 to 2019-21, 415 million people in India climbed out of multidimensional poverty. The incidence of poverty fell from 55.1% to 16.4%.
The digital revolution also allowed us to address the old elephant in the room: “Financial inclusion for what?” Now, MSC finds itself deeply involved in digital technology for effective government and regulation, social payments, enterprises, agriculture, education & skills, health & nutrition, WASH, and climate change. Today, we use technology for good and work alongside exciting public and private sector initiatives with the greatest minds in the country. As a videshi, I cannot express what a privilege it is to learn from and with some of India’s sharpest thinkers.
Twenty-five years ago, many observers saw India as a laggard in financial inclusion. Today, the India Stack has emerged as a cutting-edge model, an ecosystem that is unparalleled in the developing world, and a north star for others to follow—subject, of course, to modifications for their own markets and sociopolitical realities.
Today, in modern India, I can withdraw Rupees in cash or call home, all with a few keystrokes on my mobile phone. Yet poor people, particularly women, in the villages of Bharat and the slums of large cities remain largely marginalized, stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide and, increasingly, the climate crisis. As we look toward the next 25 years, we still have much work to do for equity and equality.
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Yet the desire to apply AI to complex problems that have historically remained elusive or irrelevant to most modern technology or digital developments has often made the situation worse. The UC Berkley School of Information has already shown 
These can be complemented by mobile phone surveys, either through 
The result has been remarkable, as measured on the