Digital public infrastructure such as Digi Yatra risks excluding the very citizens it aims to serve. Critically analyse this, with suggestions for inclusive design.

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is useful only if it reaches everyone. Digi Yatra offers paperless boarding through facial recognition. It was launched on 1 December 2022 at Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports [1]. A 2026 Supreme Court PIL names the Digi Yatra Foundation as a respondent and alleges "digital exclusion" of persons with disabilities (PwDs) [2]. The risk is real, but it can be fixed by design.

What Digi Yatra offers

• Speed: passengers no longer show their ticket and ID at every checkpoint [1].
• Privacy by design: passenger data is stored encrypted on the passenger's own phone, not in a central database. It is purged from airport systems within 24 hours [3].
• Voluntary: using it is optional, so manual processing remains available [3].

How it can exclude

• Smartphone dependence: because the data sits in a phone wallet [3], people without smartphones or digital skills, such as many elderly travellers, cannot use it.
• Disability barriers: the petitioner has a visual disability, and the plea describes "silent airports" with no other way to communicate [2]. Apps that do not work with screen readers, or face capture that assumes the user can line up with a camera, shut such users out.
• Two-tier service: if digital lanes get priority, the manual lane may become the slow, poorly staffed option in practice.
• Weak enforcement: in Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2024), the SC struck down Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules because it left accessibility as mere guidelines. It ordered mandatory rules under Section 40 [4]. The aviation accessibility standards were still being drafted on MoSJE's direction [5].
• Checklist metrics: official data counts ramps and Braille at 35 international and 55 domestic airports [6]. It does not measure whether digital services are usable.

Suggestions for inclusive design

• Binding accessible-ICT standards for Digi Yatra and airport apps, as Rajive Raturi requires [4] and in line with the Accessible India Campaign's ICT goals [6].
• An assured non-digital lane: staffed and equally fast, linked to MoCA's special-assistance facility [7].
• Co-design with PwD users, plus independent accessibility audits published for each airport.
• Multi-modal alerts (audio, visual and haptic) to end silent terminals [2].

Digi Yatra shows that DPI can make travel faster and keep data private, but inclusion cannot be left to good intentions. If accessibility is made binding, regularly audited and designed with PwD users, Digi Yatra can deliver the Accessible India Campaign's goal of universal accessibility. It would also honour the Article 21 promise of travel with dignity.