India preparing a national framework for blockchain deployment

The Indian crypto-community celebrated Binance’s acquisition of WazirX, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange in the country. However, the country’s government has not yet decided on a position on cryptocurrencies. Despite maintaining its distance from crypto, the government has promptly embraced its underlying blockchain technology. The Indian government is now working on a national framework to support the deployment of blockchain use cases across the country.

This information was shared by India’s Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Sanjay Dhotre, who was presented with questions about the deployment and advancement of blockchain in the country. Dhotre, in his reply, noted that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology [MeitY] has recognized blockchain technology as an important research area that has a lot of potential for sectors such as banking and finance, governance, and cybersecurity.

The minister also highlighted a multi-dimensional project titled Distributed Centre for Excellence in Blockchain Technology, with the C-DAC [Centre for Development of Advanced Computing], IDRBT [Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology] and VJTI as executing agencies. The objectives mentioned by the Minister involved fostering and boosting the technology by piloting its deployment. He stated,

“Blockchain Technology based solution for property registration has been developed and is being piloted at Shamshabad District, Telangana State. Proof-of-Concept solutions are being developed for enabling Cloud Security Assurance, CKYC and trade finance.”

He added,

“Generic Blockchain based Proof-of Existence (PoE) Framework is developed to enable PoE for digital artifacts, used to check the integrity of academic certificates, sale deed documents, MoU etc. By using PoE framework, solution is developed to authenticate academic certificates. Blockchain Technology has also been used and PoC is developed for vehicle life cycle management and hotel registry management PoC. In addition to the above, action is taken for integrating Blockchain with e-Sign.”

Dhotre concluded by noting the potential of the technology, adding that an approach paper was in the works for a National Level Blockchain Framework. This framework would help with scaling and the wider deployment of blockchain-based use cases, he said.