DPI Deep Dive — Friday | July 25, 2026

This week’s Layer 5 deep dive covers India’s sectoral digital public infrastructure — health (ABHA/ABDM), agriculture (PM-KUSUM, AgriStack adjacents), and judiciary (eCourts). The past seven days have been remarkably active across all three verticals.

1. ABHA Crosses 940 Million IDs: India’s Digital Health Backbone at BRICS

At the 16th BRICS Health Ministers’ Meeting in Chandigarh (July 21–24), Union Health Secretary Smt. Punya Salila Srivastava presented India’s digital health infrastructure to an international audience. The numbers are staggering: over 940 million ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) IDs have been created, and more than 1 billion (100 crore) health records are now digitally linked through the system. Over 1 million healthcare professionals have been issued unique digital identities, and 5.33 lakh health facilities are registered on the platform. ¹

The BRICS side event, titled “From Digital Health Records to AI-Enabled Healthcare: Strengthening the Continuum of Care Through Interoperable Data Infrastructure and Responsible Artificial Intelligence,” was organised by the National Health Authority. Srivastava’s core argument was striking in its simplicity: continuity of care is the true measure of whether digital health and AI are serving citizens. This is a significant framing shift from the government’s usual supply-side metrics (IDs created, facilities registered) towards actual patient outcomes.

The BRICS context matters. India is positioning ABDM not just as a domestic tool but as an exportable DPI model. The 940-million figure — roughly 67% of India’s population — gives India credible standing to pitch its approach to Brazil, South Africa, and other nations building their own health information exchanges. The side event explicitly discussed “responsible AI” in healthcare, signalling that India wants to lead the global conversation on governing AI within public health systems, not just deploying it.

Cross-layer connection: ABHA’s 940-million user base makes it the second-largest digital identity stack in India after Aadhaar. The ABHA ID is increasingly being linked with Aadhaar for authentication, creating a seamless L1→L5 pipeline where identity (Aadhaar) feeds directly into health records (ABHA). For the BRICS audience, this is India’s pitch for exporting its DPI model — not just the software, but the entire institutional architecture.

2. Tamil Nadu Scales Up ABHA Creation: 2.54 Crore Covered

At the state level, Tamil Nadu has emerged as a significant ABHA adopter, with 2.54 crore ABHA accounts created across government healthcare facilities. ² This is notable because Tamil Nadu has historically been cautious about central digital identity schemes. The state-level push indicates that ABHA is being integrated into routine healthcare delivery — not just treated as a standalone registration exercise.

Parliamentary data tabled by Union Health Minister JP Nadda on July 21 also revealed that India had 46.02 lakh registered nursing personnel as of December 31, 2025, giving a nurse-to-population ratio of 2.60 per 1,000 — still below the WHO benchmark. ³ The NCAHP (National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions) has released competency-based curricula for 17 professions covering 28 roles for academic year 2026-27, standardising the workforce that will ultimately operate within the ABDM ecosystem. ⁴

Why this matters: State-level adoption is the real bottleneck for any national DPI. ABHA’s 940 million national figure looks impressive, but the distribution is uneven. Tamil Nadu’s 2.54 crore (approximately 35% of its population) suggests genuine facility-level integration rather than camp-based registration drives that inflate numbers without creating lasting usage. The nursing workforce data and NCAHP curricula point to a deeper challenge: digital health infrastructure is only as useful as the human workforce that operates within it. India is simultaneously building the digital rails and standardising the professionals who will use them.

3. Census 2027 Self-Enumeration Goes Live: Digital Identity Meets Demographic Data

On July 17, India launched the self-enumeration phase of Census 2027 — the country’s first fully digital census. Citizens can submit household details online through the Census portal until July 31, after which they receive an 11-digit Self-Enumeration (SE) ID. Door-to-door verification by enumerators begins August 1. ^{3 4}

Municipal corporations across Tamil Nadu — including Coimbatore (CCMC) and Tambaram — have launched awareness drives. Tambaram alone has deployed 1,483 enumerators and 243 supervisors, with 1,483 house-listing blocks created. ⁴

Cross-layer connection: While Census is technically a governance tool (L6), the self-enumeration portal is a sectoral DPI application that touches identity (L1), documents (L3), and data exchange layers. The 11-digit SE ID creates yet another digital identifier that will need to interoperate with Aadhaar, ABHA, and other sectoral IDs. The question of whether Census self-enumeration will use Aadhaar-based authentication (as was controversially proposed for the 2021 census) remains unanswered, but the digital-first architecture makes that integration trivially easy.

4. PM-KUSUM Component-C Acceleration: Solarising Agriculture’s Digital Backbone

On July 23, Prime Minister Modi chaired a high-level review meeting with Secretaries, explicitly pushing for faster PM-KUSUM rollout as part of a broader rural development and agriculture roadmap. ⁵ The same week, Karnataka officials were directed to fast-track PM-KUSUM Component-C — the feeder-level solarisation scheme — with 439 projects covering a combined capacity already in the pipeline. ⁶

PM-KUSUM (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Mahabhiyan) is not typically classified as “digital infrastructure,” but Component-C’s feeder solarisation creates the physical digital backbone for agricultural DPI. Solar-powered smart meters and IoT-enabled irrigation systems generate real-time data that feeds into AgriStack, the envisioned farmer registry and agricultural data exchange platform.

At the ICC’s Krishi Vikram 2026 event on July 24, Food Processing Industries Minister Chirag Paswan called for shifting India’s agriculture from “volume to value” — a framing that directly aligns with the data-driven precision agriculture that PM-KUSUM and AgriStack together enable. ⁷

Cross-layer connection: PM-KUSUM sits at the intersection of energy infrastructure, agricultural DPI, and climate policy. The scheme’s extension deadline (now September 30, 2026) means states are in a last-mile sprint. The data generated by solarised feeders — consumption patterns, peak demand, seasonal variation — is exactly the kind of structured data that AgriStack needs to provide meaningful services to farmers.

5. Supreme Court Bans Unauthorised Recording of Virtual Hearings: eCourts’ Growing Pains

On July 24, the Supreme Court banned the unauthorised recording, editing, and circulation of court proceedings on social media and digital platforms. The decision, taken in a full-court meeting, follows a disruptive incident on July 10 involving a self-represented litigant. The Court also mandated that disruptive litigants must appear via virtual hearings going forward, rather than in person. ^{8 9}

Meanwhile, Odisha reported that 7.61 lakh virtual hearings have been conducted across all courts in the state till June 30, 2026, as part of the eCourts Mission Mode Project. ¹⁰ The eCourts Phase III programme has received ₹7,210 crore for a unified judicial technology platform covering e-filing, virtual hearings, and paperless court processes.

Why this matters: The Supreme Court’s ban on recording highlights the tension between digital transparency and courtroom authority. The eCourts infrastructure — video conferencing, live-streaming, digital case management — was built to improve access to justice. But that same infrastructure can be used to circulate selective, edited, or decontextualised clips. The Court’s response is to restrict the output rather than fix the process, which is a characteristic DPI governance challenge.

The 3.93 crore cases conducted virtually nationwide, and Odisha’s 7.61 lakh, represent a massive scale of digital judiciary operations. But the Supreme Court’s reaction to one disruptive incident suggests the institutional comfort level with digital openness remains fragile.

Layer 5 this week: ABHA’s BRICS debut and 940-million milestone confirm India’s health DPI as globally significant. Census 2027’s digital self-enumeration adds another identity-data intersection. PM-KUSUM’s acceleration builds the physical infrastructure for agricultural DPI. And the Supreme Court’s recording ban reveals the governance tensions inherent in digitising the judiciary. The common thread: sectoral DPI is maturing fast, but the harder questions — interoperability, data governance, institutional adaptation — are only beginning to be addressed.