Blockchaining India’s digital future How a nascent technology could pave the way for Digital India

Almost as soon as he was elected, India’s “reformer-in-chief” sought to upend the inefficiency and corruption endemic to the country’s lackadaisical bureaucracy. Citing bureaucrats’ struggle to get in their usual round of golf, The Washington Post’s Annie Gowen wrote, “Babudom is now in peril”. Three years later, it seems the reports of Indian bureaucracy’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

While there is no denying that the Narendra Modi government has attempted to hold the babus accountable, these efforts have been misplaced. By targeting non-performing individuals in an archaic and defective system, Modi hopes to leverage his man-management skills to enable him to deliver on his campaign pledge of “minimum government, maximum governance”. Such an approach, however, only offers stop-gap solutions while systemic governance issues are allowed to persist. Nowhere is this more apparent than in “Digital India”, the government’s flagship initiative seeking to create an interface between the government and people. Though the initiative is often cited for its potential to realize the aspirations of 1.2 billion (and counting) Indians by bringing them into the 21st century, it betrays the lack of a sustained strategy and vision, particularly with respect to governance.

While the initiative has sought to create necessary technology architecture through programmes such as BharatNet, it has produced decidedly mixed results. Among 193 countries surveyed by the UN’s E–Government Development Index in 2016, India ranks 107th. Plagued by a lack of requisite infrastructure, poor execution, and ineffective supplementary programmes such as the National Digital Literacy Mission, Digital India hopes to achieve ambitious targets in an effort to further India’s attempts to catch up with the developed world. This, however, is not the right approach. Instead of promising revolutions through reactionary policies designed to help India catch up with the rest of the world, the government must instead focus on proactively pursuing practical policies designed to leapfrog the rest of world. To this end, the government needs to embrace innovative and nascent technologies that not only improve the lives of its citizens, but also compels the government to be better in the long-term.