protection Archives — LIRNEasia


The journal club held on the 17th of April 2025 focused on the report ‘Leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure for Building Inclusive Social Protection Systems’ by Priya Vedavalli, Nikita Kwatra, Sharmadha Srinivasan, and Vikram Sinha of Artha Global published in April 2024. Background Portability of social protection, defined as the ease at which beneficiaries can retain access to social protection when they move across geographic lines, is a significant issue in India. This concerns over 400 million Indians (almost a third of the population) who are internal migrants, for whom accessing government services becomes a challenge due to a changing place of residence. The report explores how Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which the authors define as “digital systems that provide identity, enable payments, facilitate the delivery of population-scale services  by public and private actors, and other functions that are essential for the public good”, can be used to make social protection more portable, specifically in the context of India. Overview of the Report The authors focus on three federally governed Indian social protection schemes: Public Distribution Scheme (PDS) – India’s largest social protection scheme, which provides subsidized grains through fair price shops.
According to the Daily Mirror, the Finance Minister has said ““They (e-commerce operators) are just operating here. Where is the regulation for that? We will make them bring money earned here back to the country.” He appears to be responding to non-e commerce businesses who are complaining as below. Meanwhile during the 9th Ease of Doing Business Forum the Rent-A-Car Association representative Milinda Mallawarachchi called for e-commerce regulations.