DPI for farmers a central feature of India’s 2024-2025 budget

India is extending its digital public infrastructure to the agriculture sector with its 2024-2025 budget, and working towards bringing DPI applications in a range of sectors to its whole population.

A digital crop survey will be carried out in 400 districts, and the farmer and land registries will add 60 million entries.

The government is ““buoyed by the success of the pilot project” for agricultural DPI, says Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The government said last year, when previewing the DPI for agriculture, that it plans to build the agricultural DPI on open source code and open standards, The Indian Express reports.

The DPI is bundled together as “AgriStack,” a trio of registries including a unique digital ID for farmers which is linked to land records. It also includes a registry of crops sown and a digital village-mapping exercise.

The government hopes to improve the delivery of benefits schemes to get aid to farmers faster and more easily, and to provide a remote identification and authentication system for farmers.

A Unique Farmer Identity (UFID) based on farmers’ Aadhaar data was proposed back in 2021, and states have been digitizing agriculture records to help with aid distribution.

DPI beyond the farm

In a glowing review of the budget and India’s DPI gains for ET Infra, Deloitte South Asia Partner Sreeram Ananthasayanam notes that the budget also announces a proposal to develop population-scale DPI applications in 9 sectors.

The applications are intended to support increased productivity, business opportunities, and private sector innovation, according to Sitharaman.

“These are planned in the areas of credit, e-commerce, education, health, law and justice, logistics, MSME, services delivery, and urban governance,” the minister adds.

Ananthasayanam notes the ripple effect that the introduction of India’s digital ID system, Aadhaar, had on the financial system, social welfare payments and SIM registration as “the essence of Digital Public Infrastructure.”

A recent study from National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) and Arthur D Little International suggests DPI could lift India’s economy to $8 trillion in GDP by 2030. The World Bank estimates India’s GDP in 2023 at just over $3.5 trillion. A report released by India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure earlier this year made similar points.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  AgriStack  |  digital ID  |  digital public infrastructure  |  identity management  |  India  |  India Stack  |  land registry  |  open source  |  open standards