India will Develop Blockchain Framework

The adoption rate of blockchain technology in India is at all times high. To enhance the growth further, the Indian government is currently working on a nationwide strategy to introduce blockchain technology across various sectors and industries in the country.

The India Times reported on Nov. 27th, that India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is working on the “National Level Blockchain Framework. MeitY acknowledged the huge potential of blockchain technology, also recognizing the need for an additional infrastructure to deploy real-life use cases.

Responding to a question raised in the country’s parliament, Sanjay Dhotre, minister of state for electronics and IT said that

“Blockchain Technology as one of the important research areas having application potential in different domains such as Governance, Banking and Finance, Cyber Security and so on.”

The minister carried on saying that blockchain is “one of the important research areas” with potential applications in areas such as governance, banking, finance, and cybersecurity. Currently, the government is developing a blockchain-based “Proof of Existence (PoE)” framework for various use cases such as authenticating academic certificates and commercial contracts, as well as to provide a seamless way for ID identification. 

“By using PoE framework, [a] solution is developed to authenticate academic certificates. Blockchain technology has also been used and PoC [proof-of-concept] is developed for vehicle life cycle management and hotel registry management,” said Dhotre.

India, just like China seems to be changing turning towards blockchain technology itself but not cryptocurrencies, for example, a property registration blockchain platform is already being tested in Telangana State.  In June, India’s telecom regulator mandated that all telecommunication companies must utilize the blockchain to help protect customers from spam and unwanted contacts.

On the other hand, the Indian government still is very opposed to Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Just recently proposed a draft bill to ban all cryptocurrency trading as well as the possible introduction of a 10-year jail sentence for using cryptocurrencies.

The country’s central bank also barred all banks from providing any service to cryptocurrency exchanges since April of last year. Several high profile cryptocurrency exchanges have filed legal petitions to reverse the central bank’s ban, but the matter is still pending in the supreme court of India. Several other exchanges including Koinex and Zebpay had to shut down.

However as reported earlier this week, the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance acquired Indian crypto exchange WazirX. It is yet to be seen whether WazirX will find a solution to operate in India.

Image source: Flickr