Is Blockchain going to be the panacea for corruption in developing countries like India?
The old adage goes “With great power comes great responsibility”; the question that crops up, is power centralized around one authority superior to power being proliferated in the hands of many? Well the question leads us to one of the probably most important technological disruptions in modern times called “Blockchain”. Blockchain which has gained huge popularity from the days of crypto currency has now shown potential of being improvised in a myriad of applications, thanks to the advent of Smart Contracts.
Blockchain at a very high level contemplates to decentralize power, build up trust using consensus mechanism and espouse the importance of immutability. All these features seem to rekindle the fact that indeed it can be an antidote for corruption in India and other developing countries around the world. Few examples to attest the aforesaid statement: one of the very common problems in India is land titles especially in rural areas where land is not registered in the name of a person and that can lead to property being allegedly snatched from the actual owner. One of the ways this can be handled through blockchain is every transaction or land purchase can be recorded on a block which can be mined and once added to the blockchain, we know it cannot be amended or tampered with. Moreover since blockchain is distributed across multiple networks, every person or authority can have the same copy of the transaction which additionally builds that trust and eradicates any embezzlement. This also alleviates the need of manually maintaining records on paper and negates overheads, resources and process juggernauts.
Another area where corruption is extremely high in India is Healthcare and hospitalizations; in the recent times during Covid-19, we saw a complete breakdown of the healthcare system which was accentuated by shortage of beds, oxygen supply, medicines and so on. Pre-covid times also there has been incidents of hospital beds not allocated to proper resources owing to kickbacks, supply shortage of medicines and all these destroy the very trust that exists between doctor and patient. The concept of blockchain and Smart contract can eliminate some of the nuisances that are illustrated above. Using the concept of Smart contracts and DAO (Decentralized Autonomous organizations), the entire chain of events can be tracked in a block starting from a patient getting admitted to being treated and finally getting discharged. If the entire information is recorded on a blockchain and shared with all through a common platform then that can bring about transparency, alleviate mistrust and improve the supply demand aspect of medicines and other clinical paraphernalia’. This would enable potential patients to see availability of hospital beds in a decentralized platform and avail them as per requirement negating any kickbacks or favors between doctor and patients.
Aforesaid examples are some of the ways wherein a technological disruption like blockchain may be the way out to fight corruption; the question that begs an answer is are we prepared to take on this change, decentralize power , leverage technology and most importantly invest cost in building infrastructures to support this evolution? The cost aspect and digitization are two aspects wherein a lot of thought needs to be put in place. Obviously implementing blockchain in such a scale is no easy task and lot of cost is required to set up the process. Moreover how can this technology be implemented in rural and semi-urban areas where both infrastructure and knowledge needs to be imparted. But as Muhammad Yunus (the founder of Micro Lending) once famously said “Changes are products of intensive efforts”, so maybe big strides need to be taken to reach the destination.
