"Digital public infrastructure has transformed government procurement in India." Discuss with reference to GeM and its partnership with CSCs.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) — open, interoperable digital rails for public service delivery — has reshaped procurement through the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), launched in 2016 as the National Public Procurement Portal [4] and made the default route for central buyers under Rule 149, GFR 2017 [1]. Its transformative value lies in scale, transparency and inclusion, though last-mile gaps persist.

Scale and efficiency gains

• Cumulative GMV of ₹18.4 lakh crore, with over ₹5 lakh crore in FY 2025-26 alone [3]; ₹5.4 lakh crore was transacted in FY 2024-25 [5].
• e-bidding and reverse auction replace manual tendering, cutting transaction costs and price discovery time.

Transparency and governance

• A single digital audit trail reduces information asymmetry and discretionary vendor selection — a direct answer to procurement-related corruption.
• Federalisation of the platform: state procurement grew 38.3% in FY 2025-26 [3], deepening adoption beyond central ministries.

Inclusion as a design feature

• Over 22 lakh sellers, including ~29,000 startups and ~1.8 lakh Udyam-verified women-led enterprises, use public demand as market access for MSMEs [3].

The CSC partnership: closing the last mile

• Digital rails alone fail where IT literacy and connectivity are weak. The 2022 tripartite MoU with CSC-SPV and Department of Posts trained over 5.2 lakh CSCs and ~1.5 lakh post offices as facilitation points [2].
• The June 2026 GeM-CSC MoU deepens this, offering end-to-end support — registration, vendor assessment, catalogue listing, order fulfilment — through 50 GeM Suvidha Kendras in underserved regions [1].
• This is DPI's layered logic: platform (GeM) + human intermediary (CSC) + identity/payment stack (Aadhaar, UPI, Udyam).

GeM demonstrates that DPI transforms procurement only when digital efficiency is paired with assisted access. Sustaining this requires scaling Suvidha Kendras beyond the pilot, multilingual interfaces, and grievance redressal for small sellers. Aligned with SDG-16's call for transparent institutions, GeM converts public spending into an instrument of inclusive growth.