DPI in the purple sector: Disability-inclusive infrastructure can spark a boom
- Digital platforms are on their way that can ensure everyone can contribute to the country's economic growth—as consumers and value creators.
Meena is far more comfortable now with hailing an autorickshaw in Bengaluru. Namma Yatri, the Bengaluru-based autorickshaw service built on a digital public goods framework, knows she needs a ride that’s disability-friendly. The autorickshaw driver who goes to pick her up is trained and aware of the needs of persons with disabilities, a factor that allows Meena to be more mobile and independent.
Namma Yatri’s disability-friendly feature is an early indicator of how India’s digital public infrastructure is evolving to tap a massive opportunity that remained hidden in plain sight for too long. The autorickshaw service shares the same genes as Aadhaar, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and several other open and inclusive protocols that are unlocking vast untapped societal and economic potential.
By conservative estimates, India has about 30 million people living with some form of disability. The World Health Organization pegs this number five times higher, at closer to 150 million. Many of them are employable, but several struggle to find an opportunity or access to tools that would enable them to be more active as tax-paying citizens contributing to our economy.
So imagine a future that features widespread adoption of disability- inclusive infrastructure in India, including in mobility, housing, healthcare, financial services and commerce. The Impact Future Project estimates such infrastructure could generate significant revenues by 2030. Another report, by the Return on Disability Group, estimates that persons with disabilities, along with their friends and families, command large quantums of spending power.
Tapping this economic opportunity, however, requires a massive rewiring. The ‘purple sector’—purple being the colour of disability—represents a workforce that includes not only persons with disabilities, but also special educators, rehabilitation experts, healthcare personnel, and entrepreneurs and innovators catering to products and services for special needs. In other words, it’s a large and highly fragmented sector.
It’s this problem that India’s globally acclaimed digital public infrastructure could potentially solve for, given its remarkable capability for enabling such fragments to work together seamlessly across sectors. This is why Enable India is adopting Beckn Protocol for India’s digital public infrastructure to be disability-inclusive. Beckn Protocol has helped shape the technology layer on which digital public goods including ONDC, Namma Yatri, Open Network for Education and Skilling Transactions (ONEST) and Unified Health Interface (UHI) have been developed—all key in evolving a disability-inclusive digital economy.
Pramod Varma, a co-founder of Beckn Foundation and a key architect of Aadhaar and UPI, says a DPI-approach is critical for achieving this mission. There are four key aspects of disability-inclusion that must be addressed:
Discoverability: The ability to discover appropriate products and services that cater to special needs as well as help highlight those offered by persons with disabilities to a wider market.
Trust: We must ensure that the right persons are identified for various services and initiatives.
Access: It’s important for products and services to be accessible in both physical and digital formats.
Cost of Innovation: We must help lower the cost of innovation or developing novel products and services for persons with special needs.
Efforts are on to ensure that this framework is implemented for various digital public goods, so that persons with disabilities can actively contribute to the country’s economic growth, both as consumers and value creators.
In healthcare, for instance, various disability-focused apps can be built linked to the Unified Health Interface (UHI), a network of open protocols designed to enable interoperability in health services.
This would let users such as Meena not only discover specialist healthcare experts, but also associated service providers and products that can help them overcome their disabilities.
Enable India’s Blimey computer-learning tool for people with visual impairment is already integrated in ONEST, the Beckn-enabled protocol for education, skilling and employment opportunities. Via ONEST, persons with disabilities can take up skill-development programmes and other more advanced courses, avail financing to be able to take up these courses, and ultimately look for employment as well.
Meena, who already uses Namma Yatri for mobility and UPI for bank transactions, now has reliable infrastructure to help her with her health, education and employment needs. Her work allows her to set aside money towards savings and some personal indulgences as well. On ONDC, she can shop not only for routine groceries, products and food from restaurants, but also for special disability-related tools and services. Or she can be the one selling these.
