PM takes notice of IIP conveying UPI and digital payments story

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday took notice of a data visualisation company’s tweet conveying the impact of digital payments and UPI. The company depicted it through a video comprising data in the form of graphs and the sound of money transacted using data sonification. The company, India in Pixels (IIP), visualises data about India across different fields.

IIP had tweeted, “Listen to the sound of money transacted via UPI from October 2016 to March 2022. The music is generated from the data through a process called data sonification., Responding to it, PM Modi said, “I’ve spoken about UPI and Digital Payments quite often but I really liked how you’ve used the sound of money transacted through data sonification to effectively convey the point. Very interesting, impressive and obviously informative!”

Overjoyed with this, IIP tweeted, “Missed a heartbeat seeing this! Thank you so much @narendramodi sir for appreciating my idea – UPI is truly a revolution that the whole world today is taking notice of. This pat on my back will keep me going for years, thank you so much!”

As of March 2022, Rs 1.56 crore or US$ 2 trillion (2022 prices) have been transacted via UPI. Of that, 81% has been transacted post-pandemic only, said IIP in response to their tweet, crediting NCPI as the source.

Data sonification is the presentation of data as sound using sonification. It is the auditory equivalent of the more established practice of data visualisation. The usual process for data sonification is directing digital media of a dataset through a software synthesiser and into a digital-to-analogue converter to produce sound for people to experience.