New Delhi, 11 July 2018 : Rajesh Aggarwal, Finance Minister of Uttar Pradesh today said that the state was taking rapid developmental strides using blockchain technology, especially in land records management. This was critical as close to 67% of the state’s 22 crore population was in rural areas and lived of agricultural and pastoral land.
Speaking at FICCI’s Blockchain Innovation Summit, he said that change was continuous and therefore blockchain technology, if used judiciously, would yield fruitful results for the common man.
R. Ramanan, Additional Secretary and Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, said that blockchain holds the promise of transforming industry operating models in sectors such as healthcare, banking and payment systems, insurance, trading and settlement, media distribution, identity verification and management, land records management and supply chain management.
Under the Atal Innovation Mission, he said, NITI Aayog has enthused school children to innovate to solve community-related problems. Nearly 6000 innovations have emerged from schools in the last one year. At the university and industry levels, it is proposed to launch hundreds of incubators to help promising start-ups to succeed. The focus is now on promoting small business innovation and research using convergence of technologies for the benefit of the common man.
Pravir Kumar, Chairman, Board of Revenue, Government of Uttar Pradesh, said that UP was likely to be the first state in the country to launch the game changing blockchain initiative on a large scale.
Kumar said that apart from digitisation of all land records in UP, maps of nearly 70,000 villages have been linked with Record of Rights (RoRs). Aadhar seeding (PAN for entities) of RoRs was under way and digitisation of field books with plot-wise details of crops, etc. was proposed to be done this year.
Prof. Bala Balachandran, JL Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information, said that blockchain holds out huge benefits for society by way of lending transparency in transactions, efficiency, security, effectiveness, trust and forecasting.
Prof. Balachandran’s mantra for competitive advantage in the era of disruption is to exploit and explore insight, leverage and forecast from hindsight, lead and direct with foresight and avoid and rectify any oversight.
Nirankar Saxena, Deputy Secretary General, FICCI, underlined the need for using blockchain technology in addressing the complete redressal system in a transparent manner. He suggested that all data collated by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics (DGCIS) on a day-to-day basis should be linked to blockchain. The technology should also be used for transparent delivery of income tax refunds to the assesses. Information Technology experts also laid bare the power of blockchain technology in transforming the life of the common man.
Sameer Dharap, Co-Founder, XINFIN Organisation, said that the use of blockchain removes document-intensity as ledgers are shared amongst different entities. The technology, he added, is based on trust, increases compliance, reduces risks and costs and increases speed of governance. Sreeram Ananthasayanam, Partner, Government and Public Sector, PwC India said that the Blockchain is a “once in a generation opportunity”- an opportunity for the country to take a Global leadership position on cross border use cases like trade logistics & finance, remittances, etc and a quick industry consultation on policy principles to fast track adoption will help.
