This session will provide an in-depth look at India’s pioneering Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) framework, which has set a global benchmark for creating a scalable, inclusive digital ecosystem.

Pramod Varma, along with his colleagues Sujith Nair and Siddharth Shetty—key contributors to India Stack, Beckn Protocol, and Finternet—and Gayatri Panda, a tech business enabler supporting the India-UK entrepreneurial landscape, will offer a comprehensive overview of their ground-breaking work and its impact on over 500 million citizens across India.

Through the lens of digital identity (Aadhaar), interoperable payments (UPI), and open mobility standards (Beckn Protocol), the panellists will explore how DPI can revolutionize public service delivery, broaden economic participation, and strengthen the democratic foundation of societies. This session will be an opportunity to learn first-hand from the architects of India’s digital transformation, whose achievements offer a powerful model for digital innovation in governance worldwide.

This event has been organised with support from the Indian Tech Society.

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Just two weeks before the people of the United States take to the polling stations to vote for their new President, Aspen UK convened an event at the United States Embassy in London to discuss the future of trust in democracy.

The expert panel reflects on the recent elections in the UK and globally and look ahead to the critical United States Presidential election. They discuss the role of democracy in today’s society, the nature of the threats it faces and what it will take to increase trust in the democratic values shared by the United Kingdom and United States.

In this extraordinary year of more than 60 elections around the world the event assessed the extent that disinformation, misinformation and societal polarisation are affecting trust in democracy. Our discussion highlights where democracies have proved resilient against a backdrop of economic hardship and global uncertainty and the areas where there is work to be done. The discussion is be moderated by Gordon Corera, the BBC’s Security Correspondent. The expert panellists are Polly Curtis (Chief Executive, Demos), Sunder Katwala (Director, British Future), Vivian Schiller (Executive Director, Aspen Digital) and Tim Squirrell (Director of Communications, Institute of Strategic Dialogue).

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This episode explores the new report launched by the Commission on the Integration of Refugees in March 2024. A week after the launch, we discussed the key findings and policy recommendations with our expert panel of academics, community representatives and people with lived experience. How can we better support the integration of refugees in the UK? What benefits could this bring to the economy? And, what other ways could British society benefit from supporting refugee integration?

This is the final episode in our series ‘Voices from a broken system: Rethinking refugee integration in the UK’ in partnership with the Commission on the Integration of Refugees and the Woolf Institute. Our panel features Dr Edward Kessler MBE, Founder President of the Woolf Institute; Dr Magdalena Walbaum, Research Officer in Social Care at LSE and Adam Yasir, Chairperson of Croydon Refugees and New Communities Forum. This discussion is moderated by Martine Dennis, Host and Executive Producer of the Africa Here & Now podcast.

This episode was recorded as part of a live webinar on 26 March 2024.

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