It is a geo-coded addressing framework. However, to appreciate the concept and the acceptance of the digipin, you need to contrast it with the concept of India Post's PINCODE. I am purposefully omitting all that in this post.
I feel this addressing system helps a lot of "machine readable" systems. This term is a very broad term; too esoteric for the common man to understand. Ultimately, I think "machine readability" is what enables common man to shop online, order food, get turn-by-turn directions while navigation, etc. It is the whole reason why you are able to read this blog post today. However, let's not go there either.
Again, the next few lines are perhaps what a common man would not appreciate all that much...the crux of this addressing framework is a system for encoding/decoding gps coordinates mainly latitude and longitude. Somebody or a handful of people, thought of it, and, fought to make it relevant. Kudos for that.
Every Indian would want to tout this as a novel idea; its relatively novel. There is already a manifestation of an addressing framework in Google Maps. (Good luck finding what it is, much less using it). There are many others - like What3Words. (Car enthusiasts might know). You can find more if you wikipedia geocoding.
A common man can find more information on digipin. (If he or she is ⚠️determined). I found a github repo which gives a neat technical documentation. There is also DHRUVA. It is an acronym. That document details the idea behind digipin. All of these can be found of the website of India Post after a little internet search.
Final Note
All this is good innovation. But don't forget we are still a savage species. Some individuals in this species can give birth to increase its relative population. The mechanism concerned has been the same for millions of years. And it is going to be the same for millions more. Of course, today there are technologies like IVF, and, c-sections, etc. (But that is beside the point).
A subset of that population gets to witness these kinds of innovations over their lifetimes. In one sense, that is a blessing. But forget that what "these individuals" did over the years to get there. They have lied, rescued, murdered, fought, escaped, ate food, polluted, cheated, innovated, raped, invented, travelled, fake news-ed, voted, blogged, judged, punished, etc. They've done a myriad of things both good and bad.
Realize that humanity even today still continues to do these same things.
And oh yes, there is digipin for places in the Indian/Arabian oceans too.🌊
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