Online dispute resolution and digital public infrastructure – what can countries learn from India’s approach?

India is home to one of the most developed and innovative approaches to digital public infrastructure (DPI). Aadhaar, the country’s digital identity system, allows online authentication of almost the entire population to access a wide range of public and private services, while the national digital payments system, UPI, is used on average 500 million times per day to make small, instant payments. India is also leading the way in the fast-growing field of online dispute resolution (ODR), which is increasingly becoming available to everyday investors, bank customers, and even users of social media as a mechanism to resolve grievances online.

In our first expert comment, we argued that DPI needs ODR to build trust, and equally, that ODR needs a DPI approach to replicate and scale. In this expert comment, we take a closer look at the emerging experiences of ODR in India, exploring examples that integrate ODR and grievance redressal for effective grievance and dispute resolution. Together with a group of experts in ODR, DPI, and policy and research in digital development, we specifically ask the question: what are the learnings that other countries can take forward?