SCO digital ministers adopt India's proposal to adopt digital public infra

India also shared its plans to invest $3 billion to take mobile connectivity to villages in remote areas and $5 billion to bring broadband connectivity to all 250,000 Gram Panchayats

The members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) on Saturday adopted India's proposal to support the development and adoption of the country's digital public infrastructure like Aadhaar, United Payments Interface (UPI) and DigiLocker.

In a meeting of the SCO ministers responsible for the development of information and communication technology (ICT), which India was chairing, union minister for electronics and IT, communications, and railways Ashwini Vaishnaw emphasised on "India stack" being interoperable and resulting in higher digital inclusion.

"I would urge all fellow members of SCO to assess, evaluate and adopt India Stack and benefit from this digital public infrastructure," he said.

"This DPI is very important from the perspective of having completion, making sure that technology is democratised and making sure of digitally inclusive growth among member states," he added.

India also shared, with the SCO members, its plans to invest $3 billion to take mobile connectivity to villages in remote areas and $5 billion to bring broadband connectivity to all 250,000 Gram Panchayats.

India will also chair the Annual Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) summit in December.

"There was also a need felt for interoperability between different systems being developed by the member states and the body recognised the need for setting up an organisation for setting common standards for interoperability of digital systems among member states," Vaishnaw said.