How Can Blockchain Help In Building Nations
Blockchain is a buzzword today across multiple industries and use-cases. The list of companies wanting to deploy blockchain is growing by the day. But, can Blockchain build something bigger, more meaningful? Can Blockchain help build a sustainable Nation?
Let us explore and find out.
I am not an Economist or a Politician (or very eloquent in English , so if you find a typo, please ignore them), but I AM a Blockchain Application Specialist — meaning I devote my efforts to build relevant, sustainable and real world use-cases for Blockchain and Crypto.
During my visit to Istanbul last week for “The Blockchain Economy Conference”, among the participants there were quite a few from Iran, who were eagerly looking to adopt crypto and blockchain.
Obviously, the current sanctions imposed is one of the many factors influencing this choice. I will not get into political aspects, as this a blockchain article.
But, it got me thinking and I believe there are quite a few areas that blockchain can impact, help nations (& its agencies)to drive efficiency and enable them to build better economy and welfare programs. Let us briefly look at these areas of interest.
1.Health care & welfare distribution:
A recent article in CNN talks about how Trump’s sanctions are impacting Iran’s health care distribution. It says that his policy, is negatively effecting reach of medication to those in need. I don’t want to comment on the political aspect of this, like I told before, but I will look at it from an analytical point of view.
So, How can Blockchain help here? I believe nations like Iran, Turkey, India and similar have good health care polices and dedicated people wanting to implement the same. Where things go wrong, is in the righteous distribution and wastage due to various logistics issues and pilferage.
I was once in a government sponsored blood donation camp, all set! but guess what?, there was not enough disposable syringes available for collection of donors blood. Now imagine a more serious scenario, where tonnes of medications get lost in transit, expired or worse stolen. Is there a way for government agencies to track such medical stocks and ensure they reach the right people at the right time?.
Yes, Blockchain can deploy “Universal Tracking System”, which can ease the logistics issues, shipment can be tracked, accounted and distributed based on data analysis rather than human intervention. I am guiding a company, that is working on a ambitious project to use Blockchain to provide quick ID creation and validation at each point of distribution to track actual usage of this precious medical supplies. Not just supplies but database of doctors, hospital capacity and readiness, which can enable faster deployment of emergency services in the event of war or natural calamities.
2.National asset management:
A nation’s assets are not just its gold or forex reserves. There are various asset classes that don’t get accurately accounted, recognised and tagged. Can amazon rainforests be an asset?, Can Istanbul’s culture heritage be an asset? or unexplored oil reserves, cultivatable lands, fresh water reserves be an assets?, of course Yes!. Government agencies can build a blockchain based distributed database, which can be used to maintain records on such assets and its utilisation. In some cases it can be utilised to raise funds for driving welfare and development programs. International aid agencies, can rely on these data points to track their support utilization. I know a few start-ups who are working on digitation of assets using blockchain and I believe they can bring great value-adds.
3.Critical skills & talent management:
The most important asset of any nation is its educated youth population, who determine its future existence. But many nations are grappling with the issue of “Talent Erosion”, meaning educated, young talent are leaving the their home countries to other places in search of better opportunities, experience or excitement. Blockchain based education and talent management system can enable a nation to manage a database of critical skillset and talented community and engage with them for nation building projects.
Furthermore, it can enable the government agencies to deploy education and skill enhancement programs, seek the assistance of these talented individuals to participate in such development initiatives, where in they can contribute their time, knowledge and efforts. It is what I would like to call as “crowd funding a nation’s development” effort. How awesome will it be: if each literate person were to teach one illiterate person to read & write or if one coder were to teach one other person to code or what if each police person can teach one women the art of self-defence, it will make a difference that is truly phenomenal. I am aware of gradcrew® a start-up that is building a decentralised talent management system with a similar agenda in mind.
4.Tax collection and transaction simplified:
Like India, many nations are cash driven economies. Lot of transaction that happen in cash, get untracked, unaccounted or untaxed. Service Industry is one such industry. Imagine tokenization of such ecosystem and creating micro-economies that can be sustained on blockchain and tokens instead of dependency on FIAT currency. This will remove the undue pressure on the central banks to pump cash into the system. It will enable traceability as the medium of exchange is digital in nature. It may not be a decentralised system to begin with, but surely it can become when the eco-system matures. I am happy to be a part of XCELTRIP, which is building a decentralised travel ecosystem with XCELToken (a utility token)which can replace untraced FIAT usage, drive higher efficiency and accountability in the travel eco-system. XCELToken is also getting adopted in retail payment and settlement, which can usher in a new era in retail industry. We are aiming to remove non-value adding services and monopolistic players and give back the power into the hands of actual users and travellers in a REAL, meaningful sense. (XCELToken whitepaper is available on xceltoken)
Like I said, I am neither an economist or a politician, but an “optimist” who believes in the power of Blockchain and what it can deliver. I might be incomplete, inconclusive or wrong about the points I have made above, but, if I can ignite some ideas, debate and positive work towards to democratisation of blockchain technology around the world, I will be very much satisfied.
Because “Nations are Built by Dreamer and Doers!
Conceptualised and written by Raghav (this article is part of “BLOCKCHAIN WITH RAGHAV ”, a series, where I talk, discuss & write about various blockchain and crypto related topics).
https://medium.com/@raghav_50668/building-nations-with-blockchain-c4546272a1d2
For more info on blockchain related news check out BlockPiper.