New Delhi- India is emerging as a key proponent of a multipolar digital economy in which countries retain sovereignty over their digital systems while making them interoperable, an approach that gained fresh visibility at the 2026 BRICS Summit, according to an article published in Modern Diplomacy.
The New Delhi Declaration adopted at the summit placed sovereign digital ecosystems, interoperable Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and artificial intelligence (AI) within the broader development agenda of the BRICS grouping.
The declaration also welcomed work on a BRICS DPI repository and pilot projects, while recognising the Digital BRICS Forum and the Focus Group on Digital Public Infrastructure.
According to the article by Tuhu Nugraha, the approach is particularly relevant for emerging economies seeking to benefit from foreign technology without becoming overly dependent on a single supplier or technological ecosystem.
India’s own DPI model, built around platforms and systems such as Aadhaar, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), DigiLocker and consent-based data-sharing frameworks, illustrates this approach. These systems remain under national governance while allowing governments and private companies to develop services on top of the underlying infrastructure.
India has increasingly taken the same principle into its international engagement. The government says it has signed India Stack and DPI cooperation agreements with 24 countries covering areas such as digital identity, payments, data exchange and public-service delivery.
The article notes that India’s approach is focused less on exporting finished technology products and more on sharing architectural principles and design frameworks that countries can adapt to their own requirements.
India gave DPI greater international visibility during its G20 presidency in 2023. The BRICS platform now offers another avenue to advance the concept, particularly as the grouping seeks to expand the voice of the Global South.
However, the diversity within BRICS makes full technological harmonisation difficult. Member countries differ significantly in their political systems, currencies, technological capabilities and relationships with major powers such as the US and China.
Interoperability could therefore offer a more practical alternative. Instead of replacing national digital systems with a single common platform, countries could retain their own infrastructure while adopting common standards and interfaces that allow different systems to communicate.
Payments offer the clearest example. National payment networks can potentially be linked without requiring countries to abandon their own systems. Similarly, digital credentials could become verifiable across borders, while data could be exchanged under mutually agreed governance frameworks without creating a single supranational database.
The central proposition, according to the article, is coordination without surrendering national control.
This approach also aligns closely with India’s broader foreign policy preference for strategic autonomy. China is simultaneously India’s neighbour, major economic partner, strategic competitor and fellow BRICS member, while India has also expanded technology and security cooperation with the United States.
An interoperable digital architecture could allow India to maintain control over critical national systems while working with different technology ecosystems and retaining alternatives as geopolitical circumstances evolve.
The model could be particularly relevant for developing economies that lack the resources to build every component of a modern digital ecosystem domestically.
Many countries in the Global South are likely to remain dependent on foreign providers for cloud computing, semiconductors, AI models, telecom equipment and advanced industrial technologies. Their digital ecosystems could therefore combine technologies from multiple countries rather than align exclusively with one technological bloc.
An emerging economy could, for instance, use US-based cloud services, Chinese hardware, Japanese or South Korean industrial technologies, Indian-inspired DPI, European regulatory frameworks and locally developed applications.
Such interoperability, the article argues, could provide developing economies with greater technological choice while allowing them to retain control over critical national digital infrastructure.
–IANS