Including the poor and vulnerable in the digital age: the challenges of scaling digital systems

Academic director Stefan Dercon, policy and outreach manager Toby Phillips, and research and policy officer Sophie Ochmann held a Pathways event at the 18th Global Development Conference in New Delhi last week.

The team joined forces with a host of experts to hold a lively discussion on “Including the Poor in the Digital Age”. The panel, which was moderated by Stefan Dercon, consisted of: Anit Mukherjee (Center for Global Development), Ron Abraham (IDinsight, Delhi), Reetika Khera (IIT Delhi, India), Neeraj Trivedi (Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD), Delhi), Prakhar Misra (IDFC Institute), and Francois Bourguignon (Paris School of Economics, France).

The conversation examined the opportunities and challenges related to including poor and vulnerable people in the digital age via social programmes. Whilst the conversation was varied in topic, a particular focus of the discussion was on the lessons to be learnt from India’s Aadhaar system, the world’s largest biometric ID scheme, in which over 1.2 billion people are enrolled. As could be expected, the discussion was energetic and demonstrated different viewpoints.

Whilst panellist Ron Abraham from IDinsight in Delhi spoke for the benefits of Aadhaar - “having a simple and accessible identity platform is incredible useful” - Reetika Khera from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi warned that “Aadhaar is an example of how NOT to do digital ID” and suggested that “the very first step to fix Aadhaar has to be making it voluntary”. Francois Bourguignon, Chair of the Global Development Network and Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics, closed the discussion by commenting that a key factor in scaling digital schemes is “the systems you build around it. The regulators, the uses of data."