Indian Prime Minister Speaks In Favour Of ‘Disruptive’ Blockchain Technology

The most influential public administrator from the world’s leading democratic country has bullishly labeled ‘disruptive’ blockchain tech to bring seismic transformation to Indian culture. On Monday (19th February 2018) during the inaugural speech at NASSCOM Summit in Hyderabad (WCIT), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated: “DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS BLOCKCHAIN AND THE IOT (INTERNET OF THINGS), WILL HAVE A PROFOUND IMPACT ON THE WAY WE LIVE AND WORK. THEY WILL REQUIRE RAPID ADAPTATION IN OUR WORKPLACES.” The nation’s leading politician was speaking at the event attended by officials of over 80 nations’ IT industry associations, altogether representing over 90 percent of the world’s information & communications technology (ICT) industry as the WITSA consortium. During the conference, India’s primary IT trade association, NASSCOM introduced a platform to build up skills in eight different technologies including Blockchain. Previously, NASSCOM formed a group who were interested in the world of crypto to explore use cases for blockchain technology in both monetary and non-financial industries while educating and making people aware of the innovative decentralized technology. The move taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to embrace blockchain technology is being backed by other Indian minister of law, justice, electronics and IT. On 19th February 2018, Ravi Shankar Prasad stated: Digital empowerment can only happen if there is digital inclusion. With the arrival of innovative technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and IoT, reskilling of young professionals are critical. The comments came within weeks of Indian leading policy-making institute and think tank disclosing its efforts to explore blockchain applications in a number of industries that includes education, agriculture, and healthcare. Last month, the National Institute of Transforming India (NITI) disclosed its plan to launch a number of proofs of concept (PoC) trials. The research wing of the central bank has clearly mentioned that blockchain tech has matured enough to be the mainstay driver to support the digitization of India’s fiat currency. The significant endorsement was over a year ago. Since then, the research wing has expanded a new blockchain platform for several applications in India’s monetary industry. In other blockchain-specific activities in the country, in late 2017, India’s major bank started outlining its roadmap to commence blockchain technology for a number of financial procedures. Last year Indian security regulator & supervisory body SEBI established its own board to explore blockchain solution whereas the FinTech-forward south Indian state Andhra Pradesh is already starting its blockchain applications in a number of areas that includes land registry & citizen data storage.