E-GOVERNANCE ON WEB3: MAHARASHTRA PIONEERS INDIA’S NEXT TECH FRONTIER!

Gadchiroli district - Government of Maharashtra, has set a new global precedent for Web3 adoption for on-chain E-governance. Gadchiroli district will issue caste certificates to its?citizens via LegitDoc-a polygon public blockchain based platform, which makes these certificates instantaneously verifiable.

This case study has been co-authored by Neil Martis , Co-founder at LegitDoc

“Source of truth for citizen records will no longer be the dusty files racked in Government offices or the administrator governed data on cloud repositories. Instead, it’ll be the undeniable, cryptographically verifiable data proofs stored on-chain”

1. Abstract:

The Government of Maharashtra led by the Gadchiroli district administration (Etapalli Subdivision), has begun the revolutionary initiative of issuing caste certificates to its citizens which are cryptographically anchored on polygon POS blockchain via LegitDoc platform - which enables entities to instantly authenticate certificates with the help of uncensorable, publicly auditable data stored on-chain (on public blockchain).

In addition to supporting the state administration to curb the menace of forgeries, and along with identifying the right beneficiaries for delivery of government schemes/benefits, such an implementation sets a precedent for India to emerge as the frontier in building tech stacks on neutral web3 platforms- decentralization-aligned, deplatformation-resistant alternatives to the censorship-prone US and Chinese dominated digital tech stacks. Over the course of this article, a detailed case study of the implementation and the thought process behind it is expanded upon.

2. Indian E-Governance and the Web3 Ledger of record

The foremost mandate of the government or the state is to function as the legitimate guardian of property rights, and arbiter of citizen identity and records. Historically, governments have used tools such as the bureaucratic machinery, legislative laws and enforcement agencies, to deliver on their mandate. However, since the advent of the internet, Government organizations have incrementally turned to the process of ‘E-Governance’, which requires the delivery of mass citizen services online. The internet- hailed as a great leveller of information,?has democratized access to government services to a great extent by reducing the information asymmetry typically posed by the multi-tiered bureaucratic structures within the government, helping the governments realize their true mandate. E-governance via the internet, overall, has been a great success in India due to which math-based neutral code decides citizen access to information/government services; instead of a government employee, who may act as a bad actor in the process.. E-governance reinforces the fact that code/computers are better at driving trust rather than humans , and that reduction of human influence on citizen service delivery is the ultimate north star.

While the internet has greatly solved the problem of information access to citizens, publicly accessible information is still dependent on human trust deriving from official?paper records in government organization or data in government cloud repositories. In such a setup, the truth is derived and vouched by authorized individuals or?database administrators?who are susceptible to controls, biases and manipulations.

In an age where political deplatformation & tech deplatfomation is on the rise, E-governance will attain its holy grail when we transition from trust based information - it's true because an institution or an officer said so!- to code based information, which is the truth anyone can computationally verify . Today, we need open and neutral systems sources where the citizen data can be committed and verified. In comes public blockchains (on a larger scope called as Web3), which are the exact tools that can achieve this goal.

Public blockchains(Eg: Ethereum , Polygon POS ) are open state databases that anyone can audit, read or write on. Public blockchains are not controlled by any singular party - with an algorithmic and incentive based guarantee, where the data stored on it cannot be censored, tampered with or taken down. In comparison to all the preceding computer networks i.e., mainframes, PCs, mobile networks & centralized cloud networks, public blockchains can make the highest form of commitment that a given set of data stored on it remains unaltered and free from all kinds of censorship.

Public blockchains make up the best ledger of record to anchor citizen records to impart the highest level of reliability , immutability, security, open access and transparency. This is the primary reason why top E-governments, such as Singapore and Malta , have been switching to E-governance stacks built on Web3 (public blockchains). Such states are utilizing web3 for citizen services such as digital warrants, educational certificates, health certificates etc. Therefore, the concept of true democratization of E-governance using Web3, is an insightful inspiration to implement blockchain based caste certificates, openly verifiable on Polygon POS blockchain for the Government of Maharashtra - District of Gadchiroli.

3. India as a leader of non-aligned web3 tech stack

In the words of Balaji Srinivasan ( Ex. CTO at Coinbase), “the 21st century doesn’t belong to China, the United States, or Silicon Valley. It belongs to the internet !”. Currently, the globe operates mainly on the US and the Chinese tech stacks, which can be censored on the whim of their respective governments. We believe India should start building its tech stack based on the “web3/internet” technologies,?which are picking up pace in conquering their centralized counterparts, and emerge as a neutral digital tech alternative that the rest of the world can rely upon.

The ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia has clearly depicted how any country around the world cannot solely rely on US technology, since countries can be deplatformed with just a single stroke. Setting the politics aside, and analysing the scenario from the perspective of ordinary citizens and in regards national security itself, Russians getting deplatformed from digital services - ranging from media to payments is a great wake up call for the rest of the world, to reduce their dependence on the US tech. As an alternative to it, there is the CCP/Chinese tech. However, the way China has conducted itself over the years has made the world wary of using Chinese tech .

Finally, there exists a duty of protecting citizens from deplatformation from the state itself. As the world is on the cusp of Fourth turning with a high probability of change in the world order, civil unrest is growing around the world and as a natural reaction, state actors too are increasing their controls on the citizens through digital means. We belong to the arriving times where democracies can easily turn tyrannical just within a few decades, and highly democratic western countries- known for liberty and freedom of speech, can financially deplatform their protesting citizens in a non-judicial way! Hence, it becomes paramount for citizens of every nation to have access to tech stacks that are resistant to state abuse as well.

As a solution to the above stated challenges, Web3 protocols are governed by neutral, code-based rules rather than centralized-human-control-based rules. In web3, anyone can be part of the public blockchain network, but no single entity can control the network, thereby reducing the deplatformation risk by both internal and external actors - which makes web3, a risk-free alternative to the world outside of centralized and state affiliated technology. In fact this has been validated by several nations who have already turned to web3 based technologies for services such as payments & remittances , crisis management , notary services , healthcare , sovereign debt etc.

Where does India come into the picture? Borrowing from Balaji’s thesis , if we recall, during the US-USSR cold war in the past century, India had taken a neutral geopolitical stance and led the non-aligned-movement (NAM) . Such a neutral stance resonated well with nearly 120 countries that later became the member nations of NAM. Recently, amidst the rising cold war between US and China, India has hinted towards re-embrace of its non-alignment stance . However, today we live in a completely new digital world where digital alignment is a far superior factor over a simple geopolitical alignment. India stands in the right place in the upcoming world order, to become the neutral digital alternative to the state influenced US and Chinese digital technology . By advocating, building, implementing and exporting web3 based tech stack to the rest of the world, India can be a frontier in this change.

Given the software talent present in India and the censorship-resistant nature of web3, majority of NAM members may align themselves behind the Indian leadership, making India truly ‘Atmanirbhar’ and a global decentralized-digital-tech superpower. The initiative of on-chain verifiable caste certificate implementation by the Government of Maharashtra follows the same ideology and hopes to nudge India in the direction of Web3.

4. Blockchain caste certification by Government of Maharashtra - A brief

Gadchiroli is a district in Maharashtra with a population of 1.1 million. It is an economically challenged and Naxal affected district with a tribal population of around 70 percent. Gadchiroli has also been declared as an aspirational district by NITI Aayog.

As an initial step for blockchain adoption, this project is rolled out in the Etapalli sub-division - which comprises villages from Etapalli and Bhamragad. These villages have a large tribal population, which requires caste certificates to gain access to government funded benefits and subsidies - distributed to them under various government schemes. As an initial phase, the Sub-division office-Etapalli has taken up the task of running 65,000 caste certificates through the blockchain system, a figure which is sure to?gradually increase. With the success of this project in an area where digital literacy stands at its lowest, we are certain that it can effectively and efficiently be scaled up across the state and beyond.

Today, the state issues digitally signed caste certificates to its citizens via the ‘MahaOnline’ portal. However, the majority of the population holds caste certificates in paper printouts for convenience, a physical document that is challenging to authenticate and verify, via signatures on printed papers. While the departments which have issued the caste certificates can internally track these documents with the help of the application numbers on them - such a process is administrative intensive and there’s no easy mechanism for external parties to verify the data..

The proposed blockchain system cryptographically commits selective details of every caste certificate fetched from the ‘MahaOnline’ portal on the polygon POS blockchain and generates a unique QR code consisting of blockchain-proofs which are embedded on each caste certificate. These certificates will be issued to the citizens via common service centres (CSC), which are already functional across all villages. Subsequently, the open verification system available on the government website will enable government departments, or any other third parties, to verify the authenticity of a certificate with the?click of a button.

5. Blockchain based caste certificate creation - How does it work?

The blockchain system consists of an Issuance DApp (DApps are decentralized applications built on top of public blockchains) and a Verification DApp. The issuance DApp is installed on the SDO’s (Sub Division Officer) system, where blockchain enabled caste certificates are generated:

Step 1:?The Mahaonline portal generates softcopy PDF caste certificates as usual. Instead of printing the same, the PDF certificates are input into the issuance Dapp.

Step 2: The issuance DApp parses the important fields highlighted in red boxes in the above image and calculates hashes (SHA 256 Hash ) of each field; Hashes are irreversible fingerprints of digital data. (Note: Hash is unique to each data and is irreversible in nature. Given a data, no matter how many times you calculate its hash, the result is always the same. However, even a byte-level change in the data will result in drastic changes to its hash. Additionally, irrespective of the length of the data, the hash is always fixed in size. For example,?the SHA-256?hash function always produces 32-byte size hashes irrespective of the length of the data.?Click here ?to know more about hash and Hashing functions)

Step 3: The issuance DApp further combines all hashes belonging to a certificate together to produce a single final hash. This final hash is stored on Polygon POS blockchain smart contract mapped against the on-chain digital signature of the SDO.

Step 4: Upon the successful upload of the final hash (for each certificate) on the blockchain, the blockchain returns transaction data. The same is captured by the issuance DApp.

Step 5: The issuance DApp generates a QR code consisting of blockchain transaction data and the important fields parsed originally from the certificate. Furthermore, the QR code is appended to the original caste certificate to form a blockchain-powered caste certificate.

Step 6: The blockchain-powered caste certificates are issued to citizens via Common Service Centres.

6. Blockchain based caste certificate verification - How does it work?

The verification DApp is hosted on the Gadchiroli district administration website . It points directly to the blockchain smart contract . Any interested verifier with the caste certificate (either printed or digital) can head over to the verification portal on the district website and scan the QR code. The process of verification is done within a matter of 10 seconds! The verification DApp will,?

Step 1:?Read entries (both certificate data and blockchain data) from the QR code.

Step 2: Progressively hash all certificate data entries to arrive at the final hash.

Step 3: Check the availability and validity of the final hash on the smart contract using the blockchain data.

Step 4: If the final hash is found to be valid on the blockchain, display the fields fetched from the QR code to the user so that he/she can cross verify the fields shown on the screen with that of the caste certificate.

Any tampering done by an external party to the QR code data will be immediately detected during verification since it will cause drastic changes to the final hash of the certificate data. Moreover, even if a malicious actor creates a fake caste certificate but pastes a valid QR code on it, the verifier will be able to easily detect the forgery since there’ll be a mismatch between the data shown on the verification portal and the forged certificate being verified.

7. How does the system function to success?

The Verification DApp is live on the district website , where a sample blockchain-enabled document has been made available for demonstrative purposes. This blockchain implementation is a huge leapfrog in comparison to the existing system. Some of the improvements achieved are as follows:

a) Open Verification and reduction in fraud: Any third party - such as employers, educational institutions, government agencies, judicial bodies etc; can now verify the authenticity of citizen caste certificates within just 10 seconds, and the click of a button! The newfound ability to easily verify caste certificates will drastically reduce fraudulent benefit/incentive claims.

?b)?Improvements in Privacy: If an open verification system were to be implemented using traditional digital query-based methods, it would require exposing citizen data to the internet via secure APIs. However, the fast moving trends in the security domain are proving that it's really difficult to secure internet-exposed databases,the compromise of which can result in citizen data leaks and privacy violations. In the current implementation, hashes of citizen data, that are computationally impossible to reverse engineer, are stored on the blockchain and exposed to the internet for verification purposes - a major improvement in citizen data privacy.

?c)?Deplatformation Resistance: The blockchain implementation ensures the immunity of citizens?from any kind of deplatformation in the future. In an unlikely scenario of tyrannical governments or officers wanting to change or erase a citizen’s caste records for political reasons, the citizen?still can rightfully?prove the authenticity of their records using the unfalsifiable data stored on-chain.

?d)?Open Innovation:?The blockchain smart contract on which the cryptographic proofs of caste certificates are stored, acts as an open API . Any external actors can now use the blockchain data in a permissionless way and build innovative systems on top. Example: An NGO can build a DApp on top of the Gadchiroli smart contract and automatically credit scholarship amounts to students of a particular backward community.???

?8. Conclusion

The 21st century is the era of digital supremacy. The rapid speed at which digitization is taking place across the globe is a testimonial to the fact that ‘online>on-paper’. Everybody is moving online because the internet enables open and quick sharing of information. With the evolution of Web3, it’s going to be ‘on-chain>online>on-paper ’, since 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. India now is in the right spot to lead the world ‘onchain’, and we believe the onchain caste certificate implementation by Maharashtra is the right step in this direction.?