National Strategy Blockchain

National Strategy Blockchain

The National Strategy on Blockchain released by India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in 2022 provides the blueprint to spur innovation, scale up activities and sustain leadership across different sectors through blockchain technology. The strategy is ambitious and similar in scope to China as India effectively seeks to become a world leader not only through blockchain adoption but also development.

PILLARS OF THE STRATEGY:

1. Build regulatory foundations: The plan focuses on the importance of developing well-defined and friendly regulations that would encourage blockchain innovation while helping to mitigate risks. This involves the creation of a regulatory sandbox among others by considering hearings for amendments to existing Act.
   
2. Encouraging research and development: Investment by the government into R&D projects based on blockchain technology is planned. This will necessitate funded academic research, industry-academia partnerships and specific R&D centre.
   
3. Develop talent: Understanding that a skilled workforce is essential, The Executive Order seeks to create training inclusive programs and educational resources for any type of "blockchain literate" individual.
   
4. Facilitate adoption in the sectors: The plan of government has been to facilitate the introduction across different segments including healthcare, education, agriculture, supply chain management and finance part. This would include pilot projects, advocacy campaigns and capacity building programs.
   
5. Pursue cross-national partnerships: The strategy identifies and provides a way for international partnerships to lead the development of blockchain. This can be achieved through various global cooperation mechanisms, including research collaborations and knowledge-sharing with other countries.
   
   

CHALLENGES:

But there are many hurdles to maximizing the promise of this strategy.

1. Regulatory Uncertainty - With unclear legal frameworks in relation to blockchain technology, businesses are hesitant to make use of a technology plagued by uncertainty concerns.
2. Skilled Workforce Shortage: The demand for competent blockchain professionals is much higher than the current supply, resulting in a bottleneck to build and operate more solutions based on it.
3. Scalability and Interoperability: Current blockchain platforms suffer from scalability and interoperabilty challenges, restraining their practical usage for large scales applications.
4. Public Awareness and Confidence: The public understanding of blockchain technology is still insufficient, resulting in security, privacy and potential risk concerns.
   
   

INITIATIVES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Thankfully, there are a number of efforts already in motion to overcome these challenges:

Regulatory sandboxes: There are regulatory sandboxes that have been put in place by the government to allow experimentation on a narrow range of blockchain applications. Businesses can thus test run and improve a solution before launching it at scale.

Skill Development Programs: Clearly, the first and foremost skill development program that would be required to efficiently handle any kind of technology(well more than blockchain when it comes sans its dearth) is by training through boot camps conducted online or sessions offline as per designed curriculums offered either at universities in a course structure (Blockchain so far has just found itself getting sandwiched into Computer Science Engineering degree. industry bodies & government organizations specially focused with aim :

Large Coin Offerings: The government is running a large coin offering to fund the research and development needed for scaleability and interoperability. This includes investment in academic research, encouraging industry-academia collaborations as well as the establishment of specialized research centers.

Public Awareness campaigns - Government along with industry stakeholders are running Public awareness programs various activities for promotion of Blockchain Technology such as Benefits, Applications etc.

National Blockchain Project: Initiation of the National Blockchain project is to build a national blockchain infrastructure in order enhance and simplify integration with different horizontal business services based on it.

India Blockchain Alliance (IBA): Led by the industry, this consortium is formed for fostering interaction and knowledge sharing among various back-bone organizations of blockchain.

Blockchain-based Solutions in Government Services: Many government departments have adopted blockchain based solutions to various applications such as land records, supply chain management and educational certificates.

CONCLUSION:

The National Strategy on Blockchain has catalysed numerous initiatives and outcomes which reflect the government's commitment to help shape technology-fuelled advances. Even though these hurdles are present the way they have been addressed helps create hope. Through continued collaboration, innovation and focused effort we are confident that India can tackle these challenges head-on to unlock the full potential of blockchain and digital transformation in its goal towards a digitally empowered economic powerhouse.