Maharashtra Begins Issuing Caste Certificates on Polygon Blockchain Under ‘Digital India’ Initiative

A total of 65,000 Polygon-based caste certificates will be issued in Maharashtra.

By Radhika Parashar | Updated: 29 March 2022 18:34 IST

Maharashtra Begins Issuing Caste Certificates on Polygon Blockchain Under ‘Digital India’ Initiative

Photo Credit: LinkedIn/ Shubham Gupta

The step is being taken under the ‘Digital India’ initiative to explore on-chain e-governance

Highlights

Maharashtra is giving a Web 3 twist to e-governance
Aims to create censorship-prone governance platforms
Blockchain tech can disrupt societal methods of record-keeping

Polygon blockchain-based caste certificates are being issued in certain regions of India's Maharashtra state. In one of the firsts of such experiments, the residents of Etapalli village and Gadchiroli district are getting their caste certificates via LegitDoc — a Polygon blockchain-based platform, which makes these certificates instantaneously verifiable. The government of Maharashtra aims to target the economically challenged and tribal population of the mentioned regions in the central Indian state. The step is being taken under the ‘Digital India' initiative to explore on-chain e-governance.

A total of 65,000 Polygon-based caste certificates will be issued in Maharashtra. These identifications help underprivileged people get access to government schemes.

As per Maharashtra authorities, giving a Web 3 reform to this crucial documentation work is intended to “curb the menace of forgeries” and “identify the right beneficiaries for delivery of government schemes”.

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“Such an implementation sets a precedent for India to emerge as the frontier in building tech stacks on neutral Web 3 platforms — decentraliation-aligned and de-platformation-resistant alternatives to the censorship-prone American and Chinese dominated digital tech stacks,” Shubham Gupta, Assistant Collector, Etapalli wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Fake caste certificates pasted with a valid QR code on it will also be easy to detect since there will be a mismatch between the data shown on the verification portal and the forged certificate being verified.

“Public blockchains have brought in a new dimension to the Internet, where information can not only be openly sharable, but can be made openly unfalsifiable. Such a solution can disrupt societal methods of record-keeping, identity management, payments, remittances, accounting, fundraisers etc,” Gupta's post added.

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Indian authorities have been looking to harness the power of blockchain technology for some time now.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is working on a blockchain-based Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that will expose Indians to the new digital assets category, without exposing them to the risks of losing money on volatile cryptocurrencies.

Meanwhile, the reason why Polygon became the blockchain of choice for the Maharashtra government is because it is an India-based Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development platform.

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Further reading: Polygon, Polygon Blockchain, Maharashtra, Caste Certificates, CBDC

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More