When Narendra Modi proclaimed “the dawn of the new India” last week, the prime minister was hailing his nation’s debut moon landing. But the pronouncement could equally have related to India’s growing confidence in the vanguard of financial innovation.
For years, Modi has pursued policies to push an overhaul of a financial system that not long ago was both old-fashioned and predominantly cash-based, as well as chaotic. This made fraud, bribery and tax evasion easy and endemic.
His 2016 decision to withdraw high-value notes from circulation with virtually no notice was contentious and caused huge disruption for many months. But combined with the development of a universal digital identity system (Aadhaar), and a push to develop a real-time digital finance architecture (UPI or Unified Payments Interface) on the back of it, there is little question that India’s financial system has been transformed.