• NITI-Ayog, the public policy think-tank of the Indian government, is conducting a pilot test for Maharashtra’s blockchain caste certification in partnership with Web3 company Zupple.
• These certificates are anchored on the polygon POS blockchain, providing instant authentication through publicly auditable data.

Ethereum’s Layer-2 scalability platform Polygon has been one of the most-preferred blockchain networks by government institutions to deploy complex projects. In one such development, NIT-Ayog, the apex public policy think-tank of the government of India, said that it will be conducting a pilot test for Maharashtra’s blockchain caste certification.

This will happen in partnership with a Web3 company Zupple, which is already working on a model project in the social sector. Polygon Labs made the official announcement noting:

This is the first time an Indian gov. think tank has recognized & recommended the use of public blockchain in E-governance. The project was selected for its innovative use of blockchain technology to improve the efficiency & transparency of government services.

The Maharashtra government has already been working on issuing a total of 65,000 caste certificates on the blockchain network. The NITI-Ayog report notes that currently, 65,000 caste certificates are being included, with a plan to expand to the entire eligible population in the sub-division soon.

This project represents a progressive move towards adopting Web 3.0 technologies and blockchain in governance systems. The project’s success demonstrates that citizen records can rely on indisputable, cryptographically verifiable data stored on the blockchain, rather than traditional government files or centralized cloud repositories.

Leveraging the Power of Blockchain and PoS Polygon

Utilizing the secure and tamper-proof nature of blockchain technology, the district administration of Gadchiroli has introduced a program to issue caste certificates. These certificates are anchored on the polygon POS blockchain, thus providing instant authentication through publicly auditable data stored on-chain. The pilot project in the Etapalli sub-division focuses on serving the Scheduled Tribe population, including vulnerable tribal groups like Madia and Gond.

The blockchain system consists of two main parts: the issuance application and the verification application. Also, the district administration operates the issuance application, which takes the caste certificate from the MahaOnline portal as input. Based on the details in the certificate, such as name, village, and caste, the issuance application creates a unique code called a hash. This hash is uploaded to the blockchain, and a QR code is generated and added to the original caste certificate. Later, the service centers are responsible for distributing the blockchain-powered caste certificates.

The verification application, hosted on the Gadchiroli district administration website, allows anyone to check if a caste certificate is genuine. All they need to do is scan the QR code on the certificate. The system ignores tampered QR codes, so it only responds to valid ones. If a valid QR code appears on a fake certificate, the verifier will notice a mismatch between the data shown on the verification portal and the forged certificate.

This is also not the first time that an Indian state government is leveraging the power of blockchain. Last month, the Karnataka government implemented a blockchain-based certification system using LegitDoc. The application here was for the education sector to prevent tampering and fake issuance of certificates.