Dr. Pramod Varma is Chief Architect of Aadhaar and India stack. He was also the Chief Technology Officer for Aadhaar and designed the world's largest digital identity system. Varma is a renowned name among software engineers and has taught the core of programming to several engineers when he was the CTO of Infosys. He is known for pioneering the very concept of digital public good and creating the digital revolution which is now being adopted across the world.
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
"DPI stands for Digital Public Infrastructure. People are familiar with public infrastructures such as highways, railroads, and airports. And, we create this public infrastructure to bring the country together, improve commerce, create economic opportunities for people, and eventually improve the overall economy. They're created as a utility"
"Typically public utilities are created for both economic opportunities as well as sustainable livelihood. The same analogy kind of applies in the digital world. When you create an infrastructure of a similar kind digitally, then it is called digital public infrastructure. The world's largest digital public infrastructure is the internet itself".
"It's important to understand people create different layers of innovation on top of such digital public infrastructure back home while the internet is something everybody knows"
"While the word DPG and DPIs are sometimes interchangeably used, sometimes DPGs are not well defined. Digital public goods are building blocks or components that are freely available that allow the country to build its own digital public infrastructure".
"We wanted, as part of the digital diplomacy, an open-source project. For that MoSIP was developed which is an open source software to help other countries build their own digital infrastructure and hence is an example of a digital public good, which is out there freely available, but it's not an internet"
"India always has been a knowledge-sharing partner to many parts of the world. And we continue to believe as a philosophy that we should help if we are building it, whatever we are building, it should be available to another world to build their own".
" If UPI is used everywhere, interoperability of payments and the ability for Indians to pay outside or remittance coming into India can happen. If UPI goes, a lot of our start-ups also can go global. A lot of our startups, who are providing tech technology and application apps can also go global and which is a good thing if Fintech our entrepreneurs can go global".
" I think the time has come for a global real-time payment networks to emerge. But it can't be one dominated by one company or it can't be dominated by one country."
"Specifications and technology exist. Regulatory intent and readiness exist in technology. Start-ups can provide apps software development kit tools to fast-track that option."
