In the recently concluded budget speech, Finance minister Arun Jaitley had claimed that his government would be exploring the use of Blockchain technology. Besides this Jaitley also asserted that his government was inculcating technologies like Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, internet of things (IOT) to name a few.
Now it seems that the government is walking the talk when it comes to Blockchain, as per a report by Factor Daily. The report claims that the Modi government would be implementing a Blockchain based solution for digital certification of education degrees, starting from the batches which graduate in 2019.
Termed as “Indiachain” and being driven by NITI Aayog, this Blockchain technology will be first trialled in IIT Bombay and colleges coming under Delhi University. Once these trials are successfully completed, they would be scaled up to a full scale implementation.
Going back to the basics, Blockchain is a decentralised digitally distributed ledger which is maintained by a network of computers called nodes. So it basically is a list of data linked to each other, which, as explained in the Swarajya article can be envisioned as records linked to each other or spreadsheet containing information distributed across systems part of the Blockchain.
What makes Blockchain secure is the fact that no changes can be made to any data contained in the Blockchain, without the approval of all the parties who are part of the chain. Besides this, the data is not stored in any centralised database but is present in every participating computer.
Whenever there is an addition to the Blockchain, it is reflected in every participating computer. Such a decentralised approach means that the system has no single point of failure, and in order to corrupt or modify the data, one would have to embark on the near-impossible task of taking over the whole system.
So when it comes to education, the issuance of a Blockchain based certificate would mean that the authenticity it can be instantly verified, at the approval of the certificate holder. Besides this, the educational records cannot be tampered with, as changing an individual block requires approval from all parties who are part of the Blockchain. This would eliminate the possibility of people passing off fake or tampered certificates as real.
If all goes according to plan, the next in line to come under the Blockchain technology might be land deeds, which might potentially end forgery.
This can crucially prevent situations like a land conversion scam in Akhilesh’s UP, where some landowners allegedly forged documents and in collusion with the officials had shown the plot as residential in the sale deed. Such a forgery has also been noted in case of Robert Vadra’s supposed aides, with it being alleged that the land mafia had grabbed the land near Bikaner’s firing range through forged and fabricated documents.
This nationwide implementation of Blockchain though might not happen anytime soon as the states are yet to digitise their land records, but Andhra Pradesh has already started a pilot project to manage their land registry via Blockchain.
