Identity · Foundational
Aadhaar & identity layers
UIDAI, e-KYC, face authentication, virtual IDs, and the slow-motion rewrite of the Aadhaar Act after the Puttaswamy judgments.
Open thread
The Topics Index
Coverage areas across India's digital stack
From the world's largest biometric ID to a real-time payments fabric, from data protection law to state-level digital stacks — this is where we organise our reporting. Every topic is a living thread, updated as policy moves and systems ship.
Overview
How we map a country-scale digital public infrastructure
India's stack is not one system. It is a federation of identity, payments, data, and consent layers — each with its own regulators, vendors, and failure modes. Our topics index groups our coverage by the layer it concerns, so a reader tracing one policy thread can find everything in one place.
"The interesting question is no longer whether India built the stack — it is which layer is being rebuilt this quarter, and who is being asked to absorb the cost."
Coverage breadth is reviewed quarterly against new MeitY, RBI, SEBI, TRAI and state-level digital orders. If a thread is missing from the list below, tell us — we add topics when there is a sustained policy story to follow.
Topic Index
Eleven threads we keep coming back to
Each card opens a dedicated landing page with the latest reporting, primary documents and our explainers. Topics are non-exclusive — most stories sit across two or three threads.
Payments · Real-time
UPI & the payments rail
NPCI governance, fee revisions, RuPay credit lines, UPI Lite wallet caps, and the long tail of zero-MDR politics in Parliament.
Open threadData · Law
DPDP Act & data protection
Rules notifications, the Data Protection Board, consent managers, breach disclosures, and what India's privacy regime actually requires from a startup.
Open threadAI · Emerging policy
AI policy & regulation
IndiaAI Mission compute allocations, the DPDP-AI overlap, deepfake rules under IT Act 2023 amendments, and MeitY's model evaluation pilots.
Open threadFederalism
State-level digital initiatives
Kerala's digital literacy mission, Tamil Nadu's e-Governance stack, Andhra's fibre-grid debts, and the new crop of state AI policies in 2024-25.
Open threadDocuments
DigiLocker & verifiable documents
Issuer onboarding, the push for DDE verifiable credentials, and what happens to paper-based certificates as more state boards integrate.
Open threadCommerce
ONDC & open networks
Network participant economics, the Beckn protocol, ONDC's lender pilots, and how open-network design is being extended to credit and mobility.
Open threadConnectivity
Telecom, spectrum & TRAI
Spectrum auctions, the 5G enterprise story, TRAI's consultation pipeline, and the slow unbundling of telecom from content delivery.
Open threadInclusion
Digital divide & inclusion
Internet shutdown economics, BharatNet's last-mile status, gender gaps in device ownership, and what the PLFS data actually shows about digital access.
Open threadSecurity
Cybersecurity & CERT-In
The 2022 CERT-In directions, breach disclosure timelines, ransomware in healthcare, and the new national cyber security reference framework.
Open threadAccount Aggregator & consent
Sahamati's growth, FIU onboarding of banks, the lending use cases that finally tipped consumer awareness, and the new health-data AA framework.
Open threadPolicy pace, 2024-25
The threads with the most movement this year
A simple indicator of which topics have generated the most regulatory and primary-document output in the last twelve months — not a measure of importance. The AI policy thread, for example, moves a lot in volume but a lot of that volume is consultation papers, not final rules.
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UPICredit-line launch, NPCI's interchange consultation, and a fast-following UPI Lite wallet limit increase.
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DPDP Act rulesPhased notification of rules, the Data Protection Board's first orders, and significant-data-fiduciab notifications.
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State-level AI policiesAt least seven states have published or drafted AI policy roadmaps, several before the central government.
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Account AggregatorCross-sector expansion from lending into health, insurance, and gig-worker income verification pilots.
Editorial volume, last 12 months
A non-exhaustive indicator of primary documents, regulations and our reporting.
UPI92
DPDP84
AI policy78
Aadhaar64
State stacks58
ONDC46
Telecom40
Inclusion34
Method
How a topic earns a thread
We do not run a topic for everything. A thread is opened when there is a sustained policy story, primary documents to read, and at least three independent sources to triangulate against. Here is what the workflow looks like once a thread is open.
1. Source mapping
Each thread is anchored to a fixed set of primary sources — gazette notifications, regulator portals, parliamentary questions, and a small set of named officials or researchers we know to read regularly.
2. Curation & dating
Every article on a topic page is dated, version-controlled, and tagged to the underlying instrument it references. If a circular supersedes a notification, we link the old one to the new — readers should never land on dead text.
3. Quarterly review
Every topic gets a quarterly read of its coverage arc. If the underlying policy has shifted — say, DPDP rules get notified — we publish a "what changed" note at the top of the topic page so returning readers can catch up in one read.
Get the next topic brief in your inbox
One short email, every other Friday. A summary of what moved across the threads above — primary documents, regulator orders, and the one explainer we think is worth your time.