How can Blockchain transform India?
What is blockchain? It is system in which a record of transactions made in a cryptocurrency are maintained across several computers that are linked in peer-to-peer network. Whenever a new transaction or a set of transactions happens, it get added on as one more block in a chain of already existing chain of blocks of transactions. Every block added to the chain is immutably linked to the last block. These chain of blocks are protected by the best cryptography algorithms available. As these transactions happen on a chain, we can actually traceback any event that occurred on that particular chain.
No one owns the blockchain. So who maintains it? To maintain this chain, we require resources, computing power, electricity, time and money. When Satoshi Nakamoto invented the concept of blockchain in 2008, he invented a currency along with it, BITCOIN, and this currency was the incentive for all the people maintaining this chain. The people who maintain this chain are called miners.
Now how can blockchain transform a whole country, a country like India? For us to do anything in transforming India, we need to first look at the agriculture. Agriculture is 16% of our GDP. There are 12 crore farmers in India. 23 farmers in India kill themselves daily due to never ending debts because of the loan sharks and many other reasons like lack of equipment for scientific farming, lower or no yield compared to the input etc. Even if they own a piece of land, it is either very small to do commercial farming or it is not recorded anywhere that a piece of land belongs to that particular farmer due to the lack of management.
Blockchain is the ideal technology to create fractional ownership. So for example 10 farmers can own a single tractor, which is easier to do and all the financial complications arising can be dealt with largely with this technology. Land is another important factor.
The government all over the country is trying to digitize land. The problem with digitizing land is you only know who the land belongs to and not who it belonged to and what was the prominence of that land because that is very important. The government of Andhra Pradesh is already digitizing it’s land. They have started moving their agricultural records to blockchain. The blockchain can take care about the ownership of the land, how much input was given to it, how much output did it produce etc. which can massively transform the agricultural state of India.
Energy is another variable that can be implemented on the blockchain. You only generate energy where you need it. This system works well in cities where one large power plant produces all the energy required. But it does not work in rural areas where power consumption is much more dynamic. A household in a particular area might be producing more power than it needs while another one in the same area is deficit of that same power. We can solve this problem by creating a decentralized system where excess power from one household can be transferred to the deficit one and the money from the power deficit household can be transferred to the other one. We can also use the concept of cryptocurrency here to buy or sell the power by the people living in the rural area, and can be used by the people living in the cities to donate the same. Producing power has never been difficult. How we make it economically viable is something blockchain can help us with.
This is just the start, there are many more fundamentals of the infrastructure of a country that can use this technology and create a better and efficient management system.
