Samarkand, Sep 6 (IANS) BJP Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha called for a 'digital future' that promotes inclusion, protects individual rights and creates equal opportunities, while highlighting India's digital transformation and the growing technology cooperation between India and Uzbekistan.

Speaking at the 12th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Conference in Samarkand on the theme 'Digital Access and Rights in a Digital Era', Chadha highlighted the recent strengthening of bilateral ties between India and Uzbekistan and spoke about the role of digital infrastructure in connecting people and economies.

He highlighted how "India has shown that digital scale and inclusion can go hand in hand" with a network of over a billion people, who are using UPI for making instant payments in their daily lives.

"A few days ago, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President of Uzbekistan elevated the India–Uzbekistan relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership level," Chadha said.

He also highlighted the agreement between Uzbekistan's National Interbank Processing Centre and India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem, saying that the interoperability between the two systems would make digital payments easier for Indian travellers and students in Uzbekistan.

"No separate card, no cash, no forex markups, no complications," he said.

"India built one national payment railway, Uzbekistan built one national QR standard, two national systems now joined through cooperation between two countries," he added.

Speaking about digital rights, the BJP leader said India viewed them through four key principles -- access, agency, safety and opportunity -- and outlined the country's progress in each of these areas.

On access, Chdha referred to the Digital India initiative launched by the Government of India in 2015 and said its objective was to ensure that technology acted as a bridge rather than creating another divide in society.

"First: Access. In 2015, the Government of India launched the Digital India initiative, guided by the belief that technology must be a bridge and not a divider. India's internet subscribers have grown from 250 million in 2014 to more than 1 billion today," he said.

"Let us come to data, which is the fuel of the digital ecosystem. Today, the cost of 1 GB of data has fallen from Rs 269 in 2014 to just Rs 8 per GB. That is a reduction of 97 per cent," Chadha said.

Chadha further highlighted India's UPI as an example of a digital payment system designed to provide access across banks and technology platforms. He said the growth of UPI demonstrated how digital infrastructure could become an instrument of financial and social inclusion.

"When it was started in 2016, UPI had only 90,000 transactions in its first month. And in the last financial year, that is 2025–26, UPI processed more than 240 billion transactions worth Rs 314 trillion," he said.

However, Chadha said the scale of transactions itself was not the primary achievement, stressing the impact of digital payments on ordinary citizens, including street vendors and workers in rural areas.

"But the numbers are not the achievement. The achievement is that a street vendor receives Rs 5 or less using this technology; a village worker sends money home in seconds. That is India's digital vision: technology not as an ornament of governance, but as an instrument of inclusion," he added.

On the issue of safety, the Rajya Sabha MP said the rapid expansion of digital technology also created an obligation to protect citizens' privacy and security. He referred to the Supreme Court's recognition of privacy as a fundamental right and mentioned the Digital Personal Data Protection Act enacted by Parliament.

"In February this year, India also required that AI-generated content be clearly labelled across platforms. We must reject the false choice between freedom and safety," Chadha said.

On opportunity, he emphasised the importance of digital skills for young people, saying that access to technology alone would not be sufficient unless individuals were equipped to use it creatively and productively.

"Without skills, young people remain consumers of technology, and with skills, they become its creators, innovators, and leaders," he said.

Concluding his address, Chadha called for an inclusive digital future in which technological advancement goes hand in hand with individual rights, equal access and protection from exploitation.

"The test of this era will not be how clever our machines have become; it will be whether a young woman with the cheapest phone in the poorest district gets the same data protection, same data access, and the same digital rights as everybody else," Chadha added.

Chadha's remarks came against the backdrop of the recent elevation of India-Uzbekistan relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

--IANS