New Delhi: Taking note of the success of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, the Indian government is looking at coming up with a similar model to widen the scope of tech-driven good governance. Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw has indicated that the government is planning to create UPI-like platforms for agriculture, education, education, among other sectors.
To bring out a UPI-like model, the Centre was collaborating with the National Digital Health Mission. This will be used for other areas like logistics, agriculture, and education among others. These would be developed and democratised so that they can be used by everyone.
The idea behind the creation of such platforms is to use technology in a way that mirrors the success seen by UPI, the Jan Dhan bank accounts, and the digital Direct Benefit Transfer schemes, among others, the minister told Economic Times.
“The government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has created a model of good governance which puts the common citizen at the centre and builds everything around her. Be it systems, or technologies, processes, or schemes, all of them empower the common citizen and make sure that things reach hassle free without corruption and in a very transparent manner,” Vaishnaw added.
The government’s idea’s core focus is on taking the good governance model to many more sectors. Stating that the foundational blocks are there, the union minister added that healthcare is a large sector in which the National Digital Health Program is going on very well.
“This will be almost like UPI where the government is creating the platform everybody else joins. Logistics, agriculture, and education…all these sectors will have phenomenal growth using distributive law,” he shared.
The efficient utilisation of such a platform was the reason that the government was able to roll out and implement the Covid-19 vaccination program at such a short notice. “Our CoWIN platform enabled us to do 219 crore vaccinations in a short period of one year and 10 months. Large, powerful, rich countries are struggling with their vaccination programs even now,” the minister explained.
Technology had also aided the government to create better models of governance apart from the IT ministry. “We repealed 1,500 archaic, useless laws which did not have any relevance. It is a huge way forward for building a society, which is sustainable, growth-oriented, and brings a sustainable change in the common person’s life,” the minister for communications and railways pointed out.
Currently, there are 450 million Jan Dhan accounts with 1.35 billion people having a digital identity – Aadhaar – in the country.
