Pune Emerges As Testbed For BRICS Digital Cooperation
Pune has become a key venue for BRICS negotiations on how digital systems should serve citizens, with member countries examining digital public infrastructure, governance and emerging technologies. The discussions are significant for cities as digital platforms increasingly shape access to public services, payments and essential information, making reliability, privacy and affordability as important as technological capability.
The second day of the seventh BRICS Working Group for Cooperation in Information and Communication Technologies brought delegates together in Pune for focused discussions on digital public infrastructure and digital governance. The meetings are part of India’s 2026 BRICS chairship and will feed into the Digital BRICS Forum and the communications ministers’ meeting later this week. At the centre of the discussions was digital public infrastructure, or DPI. The term broadly refers to shared digital systems that allow governments, businesses and citizens to interact at scale. Unlike a conventional technology project, DPI can become basic civic infrastructure when it supports identity, payments, data exchange or access to public services. BRICS members reviewed different national approaches to building such systems. The emphasis was not simply on expanding digital services, but on making them interoperable, secure and accessible while retaining national control over critical digital infrastructure. Privacy, cybersecurity and resilience were also identified as important conditions for public trust.
India used the Pune meeting to present its experience with digital public infrastructure and proposed creating a BRICS repository for sharing information and approaches among member countries. It also outlined potential pilot projects that could test DPI cooperation across borders. For cities such as Pune, the implications are practical. Digital public systems can reduce paperwork and improve access to government services, but poorly designed platforms can exclude residents who lack reliable connectivity, digital skills or accessible interfaces. Urban technology therefore needs to be judged not only by adoption numbers but also by who can use it successfully. The wider discussions also covered secure telecommunications infrastructure, capacity building and possible cooperation on a BRICS submarine cable network. Such physical infrastructure matters because digital services ultimately depend on resilient connectivity. Greater redundancy in international networks can help reduce vulnerability to outages and other disruptions.
The Digital BRICS Task Force separately considered proposed expert groups dealing with digital applications and governance. These structures could provide a more sustained mechanism for countries to exchange technical and policy experience beyond individual meetings. Pune’s role in the discussions is notable given its own position as a major technology, education and services centre. The city offers a useful context for examining the relationship between digital infrastructure and everyday urban life. The immediate outcome will be measured through the cooperation frameworks that emerge from the BRICS process. The longer-term test will be whether digital infrastructure becomes genuinely public infrastructure — secure, interoperable and accessible enough to improve urban services without widening existing digital inequalities.
