By Cmde Dhiraj Sarin

A short column last week on a proposed state-backed Bharat Taxi, pitched as a way to free drivers from private aggregators, raised a larger question. Are we aiming too low? At a time when India has successfully built population-scale digital public infrastructure, is a standalone taxi app really the best we can do for urban mobility?

Over the past decade, India has shown rare ambition in digital governance. Aadhaar gave citizens a universal digital identity. UPI reshaped payments. DigiLocker removed the friction from document access, and Digi Yatra simplified airport travel. These platforms did not just solve isolated problems. They created open, interoperable systems on which governments and markets could innovate.

Against that record, a taxi-hailing platform feels

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