India’s upcoming G20 presidency will focus on bridging the digital divide, especially in developing countries, and ensuring greater benefits from digital technologies and transformation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday.
Addressing a session on digital transformation at the G20 Summit in Bali, Modi urged other G20 leaders to pledge that they will work together for digital inclusion over the next decade.
“The principle of ‘data for development’ will be an integral part of the overall theme of our presidency, ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’,” he said.
“In India, we are making digital access public but at the international level, there is still a huge digital divide. Citizens of most developing countries of the world do not have any kind of digital identity. Only 50 countries have digital payment systems,” he said, speaking in Hindi.
“Can we take a pledge together that in the next 10 years, we will bring digital transformation in the life of every human being, so that no person in the world will be deprived of the benefits of digital technology.”
Modi said that during its G20 presidency in 2023, India will work jointly with partners in the grouping of the world’s 20 largest economies to achieve this objective.
The current G20 president, Indonesia, will hand over the presidency to India at the conclusion of the summit in Bali.
India will host the next summit in New Delhi in September 2023.
Digital issues and reforms of multilateral financial institutions are among the focus areas for India’s G20 presidency.
Modi described digital transformation as the “most remarkable change of our era” and said the proper use of digital technologies can be a force multiplier in the decades-long global fight against poverty. “Digital solutions can also be helpful in the fight against climate change – as we all saw in the examples of remote-working and paperless green offices during Covid,” he said.