New Frontiers

Charlotte Tate: From the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs of Middlebury College, this is New Frontiers. I’m Charlotte Tate, the associate director of the Center. This episode owes a lot to Arjun Kumar, a student at Middlebury College and a 2023 Rohatyn Global Scholar. A while back, Arjun pitched an idea to the Rohatyn Center’s Director, Mark Williams.

Arjun Kumar: “I'm of Indian descent and I'm majoring in international and global studies with a focus on South Asia and there's so much happening in India right now. Could the Rohatyn Center host an event that showcased India?”

Mark Williams: The more I thought about this, the more sense it made, especially since India’s influence is already felt in so many areas, like the IT sector, global security, entertainment, the service sector, pharmaceuticals, and most importantly, cuisine. Now, the list goes on. So, the question then became, what exactly should we do?

We had a lot of ideas and there were a lot of questions and issues that we could explore, but it was actually sort of hard to choose. There were just so many options, so eventually we decided to do a podcast.

Arjun Kumar: And instead of just speaking to one expert on India about one specific topic, we decided that we'd talk to several experts and let them pick what the topic would be.

Mark Williams: So, we chose three India experts here at Middlebury and asked them all the same question. What's the one thing about India, the most important thing, that you think isn't getting enough attention?

Arjun Kumar: We got a variety of answers since each expert came at it from a different perspective. And we hope that by hearing these distinct voices, you'll get an even clearer picture of what's happening with India today, and why that matters, not just for Indians, but for other countries, too. So, Professor Williams, where should we start?

Mark William: Let’s begin with a conversation I had with Jeff Lunstead, diplomat in residence at Middlebury College and former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka. Jeff teaches courses on international diplomacy, conflict in South Asia, and the rise of Asia in U.S. policy. One of the most important things he thinks we need to understand about India is this….

Jeff Lunstead: I think the issue that’s not getting enough attention is how India’s increasingly problematic record on democracy and human rights might come into conflict with the U.S.’s desire to see India as a global strategic partner in the rivalry with China.

Mark Williams: Interesting. Okay, as I look at the record of U.S. Indian relations, I’m curious, how important do you think that this bilateral relationship really is, and how would you characterize the relationship today? Is it a strong relationship? Is it frayed?

Jeff Lunstead: The relationship is stronger than it’s ever been, and this has been building for a while. It really started under Bill Clinton and accelerated under George Bush; Obama continued it; Trump continued it; and now under Biden, it's even stronger. Prime Minister Modi has been to the U.S. three times, including for a state visit, the highest honor. Every one of those presidents has been to India at least once after a hiatus of 22 years when no American president went to India. The U.S. touts India as a major partner in its rivalry with China, which it sees as its main global issue.

Mark Williams: Why do you think that India and the United States have moved so much closer together after being estranged for so long? Is it primarily the U.S. moving toward India, or has it been more reciprocal?

Jeff Lunstead: It's been more reciprocal. India and the U. S. had a very strained relationship through the ‘70s and partly into the ‘80s mainly because of political differences, but also because India was a closed economy then. But in 1989, India opened up its economy, undertook massive economic reforms, unleashing potential, which the U.S. saw as valuable to the United States, to see India as a major economic partner. And then, on top of that is the growing competition with China, which has accelerated in recent years. The U.S. says China is the only country with the intent and the capability to challenge the U.S. And certainly, in the Indo Pacific region, it sees India as the only other major player in that region that can help to challenge China.

Mark Williams: So, what do you think that the United States government seeks to gain out of close relations with India vis-à-vis China?

Jeff Lunstead: There are a couple of things and the most obvious is the military relationship. So, the two sides have built the military relationship substantially. They hold joint military exercises. The U. S. wants to become a major arms supplier to India, wants to replace Russia as a major arms supplier. Recently, the U.S. approved a GE proposal to manufacture jet fighter engines in India, significant technology transfer. India has a large navy; the U.S. and India share concerns about freedom of navigation. The economic part is also very important. The U.S. wants to build in, as it says, resilient supply chains around the world, and India is a major possibility for that. It’s not there yet, but it’s starting. So, Apple just started to manufacture iPhones in India, moving production from China. The U.S. and India have signed a number of agreements on clean energy, on cyber, where they want to work together. China produces 90 percent of the world’s solar panels. The U.S. would love to see a lot of those panels made in India, and in many other areas where the two sides could work together economically and diversify and move away from U.S. reliance on China.

Mark Williams: Would this primarily be in tech heavy sectors, or would it be in industrial sectors more broadly defined?

Jeff Lunstead: It’s both, of course, just as our relationship with China encompasses the entire economic spectrum. That could be the case in India too, but the two sides are working on high tech areas because India, we know, has a huge supply of engineers and computer programmers. They fill the tech industry in the United States, and they’re available there also.

Mark Williams: What does India get out of closer relationships with the United States?

Jeff Lunstead: India also has a rivalry with China. They have disputed borders. China occupies a large part of what India considers its territory in the northwest, in Ladakh. China claims an entire Indian state in the east, Arunachal Pradesh, which China calls South Tibet. And China is the main ally and economic and military supporter of Pakistan, which is India's traditional rival.

Mark Williams: So, in terms of balance of power, India would gain more through closer relationships with the United States.

Jeff Lunstead: That’s totally correct.

Mark Williams: Let’s shift gears a little bit. India has been often labeled the world’s largest democracy, but what is the actual state of India’s democracy today as you see it? Is it a liberal democracy? Or do you see signs that it might be heading towards an autocracy?

Jeff Lunstead: All really good questions and especially important, I would say, because the U.S. touts its relationship with India as a relationship built around shared democratic values. And I think almost every scholar of India today would say that India is heading towards an illiberal democracy. Some would say it’s there already. I don’t agree with that. But it is heading that way and the BJP government, Prime Minister Modi, is taking various steps. It’s harassing civil society, harassing NGOs. Major international NGOs have been forced to move out of India. Amnesty moved its operations out, for instance.

When the BBC produced a documentary critical of Modi, the income tax authorities raided the BBC offices two days later. This type of harassment goes on all the time, using arms of the state to harass people. Journalists are either harassed in this way or even arrested and charged with anti-state activities.

Opposition politicians are harassed. So, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress party, one of the main opposition parties, was charged with a criminal act because in a speech he… it was actually very clever. There are several Modis who have been convicted of theft, so he said, “So and so Modi, he’s a crook. So and so Modi, he’s a crook.” He was arrested, convicted, and the sentence, by coincidence, was two years in jail. The exact amount required to disqualify him from running for office.

There are countervailing trends, though. It's important to note these. An appeals court overturned that conviction, so Rahul Gandhi is back in the fray. But the attempt to silence opposition leaders is very clear. These are all moves toward an illiberal democracy that is related to, although not the same as moves to make India a Hindu majoritarian state. The BJP has a stated goal of introducing what is called Hindutva, Hindu-ness, to India, and says India is essentially a Hindu nation. It says that others, especially Muslims, are there on sufferance, but the atmosphere it has created has become dangerous. Muslims are being persecuted and oppressed.

The government has also taken legal steps. A few years ago, they passed something called the Citizenship Amendment Act. This act said that refugees from most, but not all, neighboring countries, so from Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, could have an enhanced path to citizenship in India if they were Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians. Notably absent from this list—Muslims. So, there’s a clear discrimination as to who can get an easy path to citizenship based on religion.

Mark Williams: Let’s get back to the political trajectory that India’s democracy is on. You’ve listed some steps that the political system has taken, which seem to make it less democratic, less pluralist. And I’m wondering how that might affect India’s relationship with the United States. Should the United States care about this?

Jeff Lunstead: Well, of course the U.S. should be concerned, and the Biden administration has said that its alliances, which it is strengthening around the world, are based on shared democratic values.

Mark Williams: One might posit that the United States, as with other countries, should be looking out for its national interests, that it should adopt and pursue a foreign policy that is best suited to protect, achieve, and preserve its interests, and that one could have relationships, perhaps close relationships, with states whose political systems might be at variance with the United States on certain issues because the overriding objective is to protect and secure U.S. interests. Would that work with respect to India?

Jeff Lunstead: I think it will. I think we’re already seeing it. The U.S. has been very quiet about what is happening in India now and it’s because, again, the administration says over and over again that its main concern is the global competition with China, and it sees India as a vital piece of this competition and absent some major cataclysm, I think that this relationship will just move ahead on those terms.

Mark Williams: Well, if the U.S.-India relationship seems likely to keep forging ahead, the next question is whether India really wants to play the kind of balancing role against China that Washington’s hoping for. I put this question to Ambassador Lunstead.

Jeff Lunstead: India wants to be recognized as a great power. It sees itself as a great power, and so I think it will play with the U.S., but there are limits to what India will do and what India will say. For instance, the two countries never describe themselves as allies. That word is toxic to India because it doesn’t want to be seen as either irrevocably bound to the U.S. or as a junior partner. Although it doesn’t want to be an ally, it will join informal, multilateral groupings. One of the groupings that the U.S. has been pushing very hard is the Quad in the Indo Pacific, so that’s Australia, Japan, India, and the U.S., all major naval powers and concerned about some of the same things about freedom of navigation, freedom of overflight. India does want to be a great power. India is, of course, a nuclear power, and it has developed significant missile systems, so it has potential to be a counterweight. But there are things that India probably will never do. For instance, if China begins military pressure on Taiwan, will India chip in to help work against that pressure? I think very unlikely. The U.S., Japan, Korea, Australia, yes. India, almost certainly no.

Mark Williams: Okay. Well, as a final question, let’s turn to the future and think about where the two countries might be down the timeline. How do you see this relationship between the United States and India over the next four, five, six years?

Jeff Lunstead: Well, when you read the statements that are issued after a U.S.- India meeting these days, they have a long list of pages and pages of agreements and ongoing programs at different levels of government. In a way, the two countries are building a web, an interconnecting web to tie them together. So, just an example, NASA has a big partnership agreement with the Indian Space Research Organization. This doesn't make headlines, but it's an important thing tying the governments, the bureaucracies of the countries together. And there’s a whole host of these initiatives. And if the two countries can really build this economic relationship, then I think you could really see things take off because that would build a very solid base for a relationship, even if the China threat went away tomorrow.

Mark Williams: So trade, technical exchange, investment, military security…

Jeff Lunstead: Huge numbers of Indian Americans in the United States, large numbers of Indian students in the United States, more and more joint ventures between U.S. and Indian companies. Again, there are many, many ways in which the two countries are coming together. And this is the type of thing which builds ties.

Mark Williams: Brick by brick. Very good. Jeff Lunstead, thank you very much for making time to visit with us on New Frontiers.

Jeff Lunstead: Thanks, Mark. It was a pleasure.

Mark Williams: So, India and the United States share some strategic interests, and this leads them to cooperate as they can, which can be mutually beneficial. And even though the U.S. has been pretty quiet about India’s democratic backsliding, at some point, its problematic record on democracy and human rights might conflict with the U.S. desire to be a strong, strategic partner in its rivalry with China.

Arjun Kumar: Yeah, I definitely agree. What Ambassador Lunstead said about India really reminded me about what Cynthia Packert said, as well. She’s the Christian A. Johnson Professor in the History of Art and Architecture Department here at Middlebury. She teaches courses on Asian and Islamic art, with a special focus on India. And when I put our question to her– “What’s the one thing about India that isn’t getting enough attention?”–she was pretty clear.

Cynthia Packert: I'm very concerned about what I see as the demonization and the erasure or the attempt to erase Muslims, and in particular, Mughal history from India’s consciousness. I think there’s a couple of big things going on right now. In terms of the erasure or the reduction of the visibility of the Mughals, there’s a new curriculum in the state textbooks where the Mughals have been basically reduced to, I think, Class 7 and Class 12. They get a little snippet here, a little snippet there, and a lot has been edited out. So, students will really not grow up understanding the deep importance of Mughal history. That’s important in its own way because the Mughals from the 16th to the 19th century were really at the helm of the globalization that we see in India. They’re incredibly important in terms of global connections, trade, the introduction of language and art and poetry and monuments, food, and so on. So, I’m not sure how they’re going to erase everything that they associate with the Mughals because it’s so embedded in India’s culture right now.

The other thing that’s been going on for quite a while, I’d say since the late ‘80s, ‘90s, is that Muslims in general are repeatedly demonized in the media, particularly films, popular films. And so, there’s a whole spate now of pseudo historical films that are now heroizing and lauding Hindu rulers who may have won battle against the Muslims or whatever, and they’re now being made into these sort of great figures from history that battled the demonic Muslims, and the caricatures are really quite terrifying. And they’re just feeding into the popular culture in very dangerous ways.

Arjun Kumar: Yeah, it seems every Hindi movie I watch now has these themes of Hindu nationalism and kind of superiority embedded into it, and that’s most definitely problematic. And so, besides films and textbooks, have you been seeing this erasure happen elsewhere?

Cynthia Packert: The big one is the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, and the other is they’re starting to rename, let’s say, streets, roads in Delhi for example that had Mughal names. For example, Aurangzeb Road, right, in downtown Delhi, has been renamed, so they’re just trying to erase those names from visibility. And then, the Babri Masjid and the destruction of that in 1992 and the building of a huge Ram temple on the site. So, that’s been a long, gradual process of trying to destroy the visible remains of a mosque that was built by one of Babur’s generals. I think it was built in 1528 or so. Starting at around the mid-19th century, there started to be contestation about the site. And, ultimately, there was a concerted campaign by the deputy prime minister, L. K. Advani, around 1990 to stir up support for building a Ram temple in the same place as the Masjid and ended up in this terrible destruction. So, that kind of erasure was scary because literally a mob just descended on the mosque and destroyed it one afternoon.

The other thing that is worrisome too is that everybody who was involved in that destruction has been given a pass. There were decades of court cases and they’ve all been dismissed. So, what concerns me is that when you have these kind of mob mentalities, I worry that if something like that is targeted toward monuments that exist already, there could be destruction. I’m surprised that not more has happened. The mob mentality can take over so fast.

Arjun Kumar: Most definitely. I think that mob mentality has only been bolstered by the BJP government over the past three decades. So, it’s pretty scary to think about what could happen in the future.

Cynthia Packert: One of the concerns I have in terms of monuments, material culture, erasure of things that are associated with the Mughals, are even something as iconic as the Taj Mahal. Already the UP government, the tourist board, has removed the Taj Mahal as a tourist attraction in Agra, which is remarkable. And, especially since maybe even 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you will find all kinds of things talking about how the Taj is the pride of India, right? It is something that all Indians can get behind. But now it’s removed from the literature and there’s a court filing that it was built on the site of a Shiva temple. And these kinds of things lead to dangerous mob attacks. It doesn’t take much to get people whipped up on something. And I don’t really know what they’re doing to protect the monuments. I do know that they’re doing a lot to protect the new Ram temple that’s about to open. I’m not sure what is being done to protect these iconic monuments.

Arjun Kumar: I did some research into it, and with the Places of Worship Act of 1991, it’s technically illegal for new construction on top of an existing religious site before pre-independence in 1947. But, this law doesn't really have any kind of grounding for Muslim monuments, but I'm sure it does for Hindu monuments. And I definitely want to hear your perspectives on why Muslims and the Mughals are being targeted particularly. They’re such an integral part of Indian culture and history, but does it have to do with the government in power right now and their overriding ambitions?

Cynthia Packert: Yeah, you’re right on the money. What the BJP is trying to do and has been trying to do for the last couple of decades is to re-invent a mythical, united, uniform Hindu history for India that never existed. And they blame the Mughals, Muslims in general, but Mughals and Christians around the edges for what they say is destroying Hindu culture in India. And so, what they want to do is just sweep that all away, recreate this sort of seamless path back to a mythical past that never existed, and try to put in place a monolithic Hindu way of self-identification and nationalism, which of course never existed in India prior to the 20th century. As we know, all over India there never was a unitary Hinduism. There are all different ways of practicing and great regional variations between north and south and east and west.

Arjun Kumar: Just one final question for you, Professor Packert. Why is this important? What is the significance for India that a very grand portion of its history is at risk of being erased permanently?

Cynthia Packert: Yeah, well India’s history is all the richer for Muslims coming in, in general, and the Mughals in particular. There are so many important ideas that were fostered and so many advances that were made during the Mughal period, particularly in terms of connections with other parts of the world, globalization, the development of a kind of history that was not a practice earlier under Hindu rulers and others. So, bringing in this idea of an imperial history that’s actually transcribed and recorded and illustrated is a very different approach to history. So, they brought in book arts, different kinds of cuisine, language, poetry, music, funerary monuments, mosques, a whole new way of painting that has now permeated the way visual culture is represented in India, textiles, as I mentioned, trade, just basically opening up trade all across the continent. Also, the introduction of the Portuguese and the British and all that to the courts, also with the Persians and the Ottomans. I think we forget how interconnected India became to a broader global scope because of the Mughals and their kinds of relationships as well. Plus, I think the Mughals, in general, were not destructive. They did a lot, particularly under Akbar. They’re very tolerant and very interested in India itself and made a lot of contributions to the landscape in terms of not just monuments, but also making sure that provinces were run in a fair way and so forth. So, it is unfair to the Mughals and unfair to India and its history to paint them as completely destructive because they did contribute an enormous amount. And so, I would ask you as a young person, when you think of that bit of history being removed from your consciousness, what would be missing from your understanding of India?

Arjun Kumar: When you first said it, I was thinking, obviously the food. When you think of typical North Indian cuisine, immensely Mughlai. Obviously the food, a lot of traditional Indian clothing has kind of Mughal influence on it, too. Even if you’re speaking Hindi, there’s a lot of Mughalized words into it, too. I think Mughal culture is part of the beautiful culture, especially to popularized Western audiences. When you go see the Taj Mahal, the Mughal culture is the forefront of Indian culture, and it’s kind of really hard to remove that. It’s very sad to see that this is at risk of faltering.

Cynthia Packert: If you’re going to Hinduize India, I think you rob India of its more global connectedness. It denies the culture the richness that it actually has and so it sanitizes everything and everything gets turned inward, which I don't think is healthy at all.

Arjun Kumar: Thank you so much for joining us today, Professor Packert. It was great to hear your insight on the one important issue in India that isn't being talked about.

Cynthia Packert: Well, thank you, Arjun, and I hope you have a really good study abroad semester.

Arjun Kumar: Thank you.

Mark Williams: Listening to Cynthia speak about the Mughal and Islamic aspects of India’s culture and past is pretty inspiring. It would be a shame to see that history get erased, and in the process lose sight of some of India’s historic contributions to the world. The good news is that India hasn’t stopped innovating in ways that could benefit other countries and societies. In fact, my conservation with Sunder Ramaswamy dealt specifically with one of these new innovations. Sunder is the Distinguished College Professor of International Economics. He directs Middlebury’s International and Global Studies Program, and when I spoke to him, the one thing about India that he felt wasn’t getting enough attention was…

Sunder Ramaswamy: As a development economist, the one thing that I think there is not enough attention across the board is the application of large-scale digital technology to solve development problems. The technical term is the India Stack.

Mark Williams: Although India isn’t unique in having various development problems, one of the most pressing is poverty. As Sunder explained…

Sunder Ramaswamy: All students of Indian history know the story that prior to 1750, India and China accounted for half the world's GDP. The richest region in the world was the Mughal Empire. Then the British came, and in 1947, India was one of the poorest countries in the world. And I think from the story of independence until the economic reforms launched in ‘91, India, at least in the West, was seen as an exotic country. It gave us Gandhi, it gave us yoga, but it was really a poor country. It was always a poor country. That was the basket case of poverty.

Mark Williams: One factor that’s presented a challenge to India’s development—and to poverty alleviation—has been its sheer complexity. In many ways India is a complex quilt of caste, class, region, and language. And the magnitude of these differences easily bewilders Europeans and Americans. Every 50 miles the language will change, the cuisine will change, the religion will change, the caste will change, and so on. Not surprisingly, these differences forced many Indians to grapple with profound questions of identity. Who am I? What do I belong to? Which tribe? Which region? Which caste? And while much effort went into answering such questions, a more fundamental issue for development and poverty alleviation went unaddressed. As Sunder explained…

Sunder Ramaswamy: To me, identity is not the same as identification. “Who am I,” is not the same as the following statement, “I am who I am.” Sounds very trivial, but how do we in a nation of billions make the connection when I say that I'm Sundar Ramaswamy? So there was so much effort through the decades until 2010 on identity, but not really on identification. There were patchwork arrangements of ration cards and driver’s licenses, halfhearted attempts to have a national registry, and why is this relevant? Because it’s such a large portion of the population that’s poor, and that the state wants to hand over subsidies, everything from wheat and rice and kerosene and petrol and liquid petroleum gas.

Mark Williams: I’m beginning to see why identifying the proper recipients of poverty alleviation subsidies is important, but as Sunder continued, I learned there’s even more to the story.

Sunder Ramaswamy: There was a classic moment in development history of India in 1985. The young technocratic prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, assumes the prime ministership when his mother, Indira Gandhi, gets assassinated. He’s unwillingly dragged into politics, and he wants to bring technology in for the very first time to revolutionize India. And he goes to one of these eastern states, I think Orissa, after a natural disaster, floods or cyclone or something. And a very poor woman had sold her sister-in-law for 40 rupees, just sold her because she’s so desperately poor. And Rajiv Gandhi, born in the lap of luxury, has no clue that this is what life on the ground for the poor is. And he says, “Okay, so we’ve been spending all this money on poverty relief. What's going on?” And he’s shocked when his bureaucrats find out and tell him that out of every 100 rupees, only 15 rupees actually reach the poor. So, 85 rupees is getting lost through leakage through red tape through corruption, and since then he’s trying to figure out how to solve this problem.

Mark Williams: While the new prime minister was shocked, it’s not that his predecessors hadn’t been working hard to address the poverty problem.

Sunder Ramaswamy: Every prime minister since 1947 has dutifully said I’m going to launch this scheme. And you'll proudly announce in every budget session of the parliament in February and say, “I've allocated so many millions of rupees” and so on.
So by this time around, we are spending 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent of India's GDP on these schemes. And imagine if the leakage is 85 percent of that.

Mark Williams: These schemes are subsidies for goods and services?

Sunder Ramaswamy: Subsidies for goods and services. And some of it is just blatant corruption and the fact that it takes time for the money to reach from one place to the person on the ground. So, it’s the last-mile problem. But it’s also the first-mile problem. If I say I’m Sundar Ramaswamy, how does the state know that I am who I am? So, this starts this long quest of trying to figure out how do we solve this identification problem.

It got an impetus when Manmohan Singh—he’s the prime minister, he’s the architect of the reforms in 1991—and, thanks to the Y2K problem and the previous digital revolution of the late ‘90s, many of the Indian IT companies suddenly took off. One of the major companies called Infosys, and one of the co-founders by the name of Nandan Nilekani, who was a technocrat, is fraught with this idea of using digital technology as a way to solve this identification problem that Rajiv Gandhi is wrestling with in 1985 at that cyclone site. And then he, of course, tragically gets assassinated like his mother in 1991. So, Manmohan Singh comes along as prime minister and starts this program. And when Prime Minister Modi comes along in 2014, his first election slogan was “maximum governance with minimum government.” He realizes there is actually some merit to this identification program. And Mr. Nandan Nilekani, who tried to run for the parliamentary elections in 2014 on a ticket from the Congress party and lost the election, was convinced by Mr. Modi to come and work for him. Nilekani realizes that his mission to solve this identification problem so that money can go directly into a bank account and not through layers of bureaucracy is a much higher calling. So, he agrees to stay on in New Delhi and launches this.

Mark Williams: And just like that—like a jigsaw puzzle—all the pieces fall into place for India to launch an initiative called the JAM, a project that aimed to stop this massive leakage of government subsidies by linking Indians’ individual bank accounts with a personalized, un-hackable biometric ID card and number, and a mobile phone.

Sunder Ramaswamy: In 2014 the government says, I want to launch something called JAM. Prime ministers on the Independence Day, August 15th, speech, they make these big pronouncements. And so, one of his big pronouncements was the launching of this program called JAM, which is an easy acronym because everybody loves jam, I guess. “J” stands for people's money in Hindi as a way to provide free savings accounts for people. “A” actually stands for Aadhaar, which means foundation. And “M” was to try and get India to leapfrog the old landline technology and get a mobile phone in everyone's hand. So, JAM stood for People's Savings Account, a biometric based, unique identity for 1.2 billion Indians and “M” stood for mobile telephony.

The idea was, simply put, if you go back to the Rajiv Gandhi story and the fact that every government has faced huge budget deficits, and they realize that they just cannot run deficits and debts. They need to get the private-public partnership going and improve the efficiency of these benefit schemes. So, we have seen the success of these benefit schemes in other parts of the world, but not on a scale like India. And so, in 2015 starts this enormous program linking the private banking sector, the public banking sectors, the regulators, hosting hundreds and hundreds of clinics at the ground level to get people to bank and to understand that I am not going to give away my identity just because this unique identification card is going to take my biometrics. In a very few years, 90 percent of Indians now have a unique identification card. It's the largest rollout, so much so that the World Bank, in 2016 I think, Paul Romer, the Nobel laureate, as a chief economist, was stunned at how quickly this rolls out. And it’s now, I think, 93 percent of Indians have a unique identification—a 12-digit unique identification number that links your fingerprints, that links your iris, and that links your identification to answer the question, “I am who I say I am.”

People are beginning to realize that instead of getting my kerosene subsidy by going and asking for it, I suddenly open a bank account and the money has shown up in my beneficiary’s account because the customer has been authenticated as Sundar Ramaswamy. Then I begin to start talking to my friends and neighbors and the word starts to spread that the old system where I had to go and stand in line to get my kerosene or what have you, I am now getting a direct benefit transfer, which is also called DBT, is happening directly into the bank account.

The foundation of this India stack, it’s three layers. The foundation was this biometric identification. The second layer was another acronym called UPI, Unified Payment Interface, Google Pay, convincing other entities to use the third part of the JAM, to use mobile wallets and digital payments. Suddenly vendors on the street say, “Okay, I could sell you bananas and I don't need money. I just need you to scan the QR code and transfer it to my GPay” or what have you. So, the second layer was in 2015-16, they introduced, on a massive scale, universal payment interface with its own Indian companies called PTM and others. And of course, the foreign companies, like Google Pay, came in, Walmart came in. And suddenly, there’s not just bank finance—private and public sector banks—but non-bank financial opportunities to go cashless. There are stories in the local press of people saying “I used to hold cash in my hand and when I used to travel back to my village, I was always worried that I’ll get robbed or mugged. Now, I just know it’s there when I need it. I can retrieve it through an ATM or through a digital transfer.”

So, this idea of cashless simultaneously takes off. And it becomes easy because of the foundation being identification that I don’t have to run from pillar to post convincing someone that I am who I am. Now simultaneously, of course, there are stories in the press of Aadhaar cards, which is the biometric card, being stolen. But what is interesting I think—I'm fairly certain about this—Aadhaar cards, the card that I have in my wallet, they have been forged. To date, the 12-digit unique number has never been hacked, which from a computer science standpoint is a fascinating story that somehow their encryption has worked and that has bought trust that my number is still mine. That 12-digit number, which has my fingerprint, which has my iris, which has my whole identity, right?

Mark Williams: And so this is a way to address privacy issues?

Sunder Ramaswamy: Privacy issues, and all of this. So, I think it’s important to say that the unique number has yet to be hacked, even though there have been lots of counterfeit cards. And every time the counterfeit happens, they stamp it out. So, on the one hand there is now unique foundational identity that has been established from 2014 to the present, 91 percent of Indians have a unique Aadhaar card. In 2021—this shocked me—40 percent of global, real fintech transactions happened in India. I was not expecting that.

Mark Williams: Okay.

Sunder Ramaswamy: Even though this starts out as digital financial inclusion, when COVID happened, they use this architecture, because everyone has a unique identification, to roll out, on quick time, the fastest, vaccine inoculation camps across the country. And there are thousands and thousands of clinics organized all over the country, but that digital public infrastructure that is set up six or seven years ago makes it easier to uniquely identify who the individual is. So, I think when COVID and the COVIN program, which allowed billions of people to get vaccinated, it further convinced people that I’m getting my services rendered, and I don’t have to bribe anyone to get what is due to me.

Mark Williams: Okay, last question. What’s the record so far in terms of addressing poverty through this mechanism versus addressing poverty under the old schemes.

Sunder Ramaswamy: Because it happened so fast in the grand scheme of things, I think neutral observers have come to the conclusion that more people have been lifted out of poverty in India in the last seven or eight years, which is quite remarkable. In fact, UNICEF calculated that what got done in the last nine years would have taken 47 years if we had done the old scheme. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because the average public has not caught on to what an exercise this has been and the fact that it could be replicable.

Mark Williams: Is India making this technology available?

Sunder Ramaswamy: They’re starting to. They don’t want to copyright it. I don’t think that’s the intention. I think they want to tell the story of how it can be done. I think it’s the coming together of the people's accounts, the Aadhaar, the identification problem, and mobile phony. India is one of the few places that has brought it all together and packaged it and pushed it to a way that addresses the people's problem. And that has been unique.

Mark Williams: Sunder, thank you very much for dropping by and visiting us here at New Frontiers.

Sunder Ramaswamy: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Arjun Kumar: Well, that’s it for this episode. We hope our experts have given you all some new insights into India and why what’s happening over there matters and where India might be headed. And Professor Williams, thank you so much for inviting me to participate in the New Frontiers podcast series.

Mark Williams: Arjun, you’re very welcome. It’s been great working with you. Thanks for participating and for suggesting that we do this episode.

This episode of New Frontiers was produced by Margaret DeFoor and me, Mark Williams. Our theme music is by Ketsa. If you like the show, leave us a rating or review on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. This can help others find us, too. We’ll be back with another episode of New Frontiers. Thanks a lot.