Aadhar & UPI: India's Greatest Soft Power Export Yet

Aadhar & UPI: India's Greatest Soft Power Export Yet

In the 21st century, soft power is no longer just about movies, music, and media. It’s about code, connectivity, and credibility. And India, a rising digital superpower, is sitting on a goldmine of soft power—two public digital infrastructure platforms that are already transforming lives domestically and now have the potential to reshape the Global South: Aadhar and UPI.

While China built ports and roads under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the United States exported its culture through Hollywood and Silicon Valley, India quietly built the most advanced digital identity and payments infrastructure in the world. Now, the next great wave of development in the Global South won’t be powered by bricks and mortar, but by digital rails—and India is in prime position to lay them down.

What Aadhar and UPI Represent

Aadhar is the largest biometric digital identity system in the world, with over a billion citizens enrolled. It has enabled everything from direct benefit transfers to secure access to government services, and forms the backbone of India's digital public infrastructure.

UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is a real-time payment system that has revolutionized financial transactions in India. In a few short years, it turned India from a cash-heavy economy to a leader in mobile payments—processing over 11 billion transactions monthly as of mid-2025.

These tools aren’t just Indian triumphs—they are blueprints for transformation.

Why the Global South Needs This

Across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, hundreds of millions still lack digital identities or access to the formal banking system. Without IDs, people can't vote, open bank accounts, or access public benefits. Without seamless payment systems, economies remain informal, prone to corruption, and slow to scale.

That’s where Aadhar and UPI come in.

By licensing and deploying these tools across the Global South, India offers something no one else has: a tested, open, inclusive system, proven at scale, with no colonial strings attached.

The New Soft Power

This isn’t just about infrastructure. It's about influence. Countries that digitize with India’s help will look to India as a partner, not a patron. India won't just be a supplier of software—it will be seen as a visionary leader of the digital age, a true ally in the fight against poverty, exclusion, and inefficiency.

This soft power could eclipse China’s BRI, which has led to debt traps and allegations of neocolonialism. It could surpass America’s soft power rooted in culture, which has little direct impact on governance or economic empowerment. India’s gift is empowerment through code—something uniquely modern, replicable, and deeply transformative.

Beyond Aid: A Platform for Global Good

Imagine a poor farmer in Ghana opening a digital wallet linked to a biometric ID within minutes—no paperwork, no corruption, instant access to credit. Or a health worker in Kenya receiving direct aid with full transparency. Or a small businesswoman in Peru making cross-border payments without exorbitant fees.

This is not a fantasy. It is within reach, and India is the only country that has built this end-to-end system, run it at scale, and is now willing to share it.

The Business of Benevolence

For India, this is not just diplomacy—it’s smart geopolitics and good business. Licensing deals, partnerships with telcos and fintechs, and participation in national digital transformation projects across dozens of countries will create massive new revenue streams, generate goodwill, and open doors for Indian enterprises worldwide.

Think of it as the Digital BRI, but ethical, open-source, and scalable. And powered not by debt, but by dignity.

A Call to Action

If India's greatest soft power export in the 20th century was Gandhi, in the 21st century, it will be GovTech. Not the kind that spies or controls, but the kind that liberates and empowers.

The time is now. If India can lead this charge, it will not only reshape the future of the Global South—but also redefine what it means to be a global power in the AI and digital age.

India doesn’t need to build empires. It just needs to build platforms—and share them.

That’s real power. And it’s time the world experienced it.

Aadhar & UPI: India's Greatest Soft Power Export Yet

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 2, 2025

The $50 Trillion Unlock: Why GovTech, Not the BRI, Will Transform the Global South

The $50 Trillion Unlock: Why GovTech, Not the BRI, Will Transform the Global South

In recent years, the world has watched China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reshape infrastructure development across continents. Roads, railways, ports, and pipelines have sprung up across Asia, Africa, and Latin America—symbols of Beijing’s growing global influence. In response, the US and EU have tried to offer counter-narratives and limited investments. But none of these efforts, impressive as they may seem, have come close to truly meeting the infrastructure needs of the Global South.

That’s because they’re all still playing an old game.

The real revolution won’t be in who builds the most roads or who lends the most money—it will be in who unleashes the latent wealth already buried in the soil of the Global South. The key? GovTech-powered land digitization. The act of precisely mapping, recording, and registering land ownership for every plot of land in every village, town, and city. Not just on paper, but on secure digital platforms tied to national ID systems and satellite imagery.

Why This Changes Everything

The vast majority of land in the developing world today—rural and urban alike—is informally held. Families live on it. Farmers farm it. But they can’t leverage it. Without legal recognition or digitized proof of ownership, land can’t serve as collateral for loans. That locks out hundreds of millions from credit markets and entrepreneurship. It traps the economy in an informal loop of low productivity and high poverty.

Now imagine this:

• Every parcel of land is satellite-mapped.

• Ownership is clearly established through digital title deeds.

• Disputes are resolved via mobile courts or blockchain-backed records.

• This digitized land becomes bankable collateral.

Suddenly, we’re not talking about aid or debt diplomacy—we’re talking about unlocking $50 trillion in dead capital, as Hernando de Soto famously argued. That’s money that local people could borrow from local banks to build homes, start businesses, or invest in community infrastructure. It’s money that doesn’t need to come from Beijing, Washington, Brussels, or the IMF. It’s already there.

A GovTech Revolution in the Making

This is what GovTech—government technology—makes possible.

GovTech is more than digitizing services or putting tax forms online. It is about re-engineering the very operating system of a country. Think:

• Satellite-based land mapping.

• Mobile-first property registries.

• Blockchain land ledgers.

• Integration with digital ID systems like India’s Aadhaar.

• Interoperable databases between banks, courts, and land records.

This isn’t hypothetical. India has begun this journey. Rwanda has made progress. Estonia is already operating like a fully digitized state. But these are early experiments. The massive rollout—across Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and small island nations—is still ahead.

Why the BRI and the West Can’t Compete

The BRI builds things for governments. GovTech builds capabilities within governments. The former creates dependence. The latter builds sovereignty.

Western infrastructure programs, when they do exist, tend to focus on financing mega-projects, which often take years to execute and don’t always address the foundational needs of rural populations.

By contrast, land digitization is scalable, inclusive, and locally empowering. You don’t need to borrow billions from a superpower to do it. You just need satellites, software, and political will. You can map a country in months, not decades.

The Multiplier Effect

Once land is digitized, its value is activated:

• Credit expansion: Farmers and micro-entrepreneurs gain access to capital.

• Tax efficiency: Governments can collect more accurate property taxes to fund local projects.

• Corruption reduction: Transparent ownership records end elite land grabs.

• Urban development: Slums can be upgraded with real titles and services.

• Foreign investment: Investors trust a land market that’s digitally verifiable.

This is the most inclusive form of economic stimulus the world has never tried.

The Call to Action

If you want to help the Global South rise, don’t build another port. Build digital infrastructure for governance. Build systems that turn land into leverage. Build GovTech.

With the right vision and partnerships, a coalition of tech firms, philanthropists, and forward-thinking governments could roll out a global LandTech initiative in the next five years. The returns would dwarf the BRI. They would permanently alter the economic trajectory of billions.

Infrastructure starts beneath your feet. It’s time we recognized that the most valuable resource in the Global South isn’t foreign capital. It’s local land, waiting to be unlocked.

Let’s do it—with satellites, software, and sovereignty.

The $50 Trillion Unlock: Why GovTech, Not the BRI, Will Transform the Global South 🧵

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 2, 2025