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Digital Economy - tool for Social Inclusion

In the recently held G20 Digital Ministers’ Meeting hosted at Trieste, Italy, the G20 ministers adopted a declaration for “Leveraging Digitalization for a Resilient, Strong, Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery”. It is noted to hear the Ministers agreed to work towards the enhanced cooperation on the pillars of Digital Economy and Digital Government. Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw led the Indian delegation virtually and shared India’s success story of Digitalization how, Digital India is working out for digital inclusion and social empowerment, through digital technologies and public digital platforms such as AADHAAR, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) etc. “Providing digital identity Aadhaar to 1.29 billion users, opening bank accounts of 430 million poor people and linking both these to send the financial entitlements directly into bank accounts has eliminated leakages from the delivery system. Around 900 million citizens are receiving benefits of one or more schemes. This has not only empowered the common citizens but has also led to savings of over $24 billion in the last seven years.

Vaishnaw also highlighted the importance of digital inclusion during the pandemic for which India has been a strong proponent. He said that technology is for Digital Inclusion and not for creating digital divide and India has always been advocating that digital economy is an important tool for social inclusion. Minister of State Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar shared India’s model for the availability of robust and secured digital infrastructure including digital platforms and connectivity under the Digital India programme. He spoke, Technology and Digitalization has been front and center in the toolkits of every government’s response to the COVID causing disruption of lives, livelihoods and economies. He suggested that G20 countries should collaborate on .