The old city of Raipur, in the mid-eastern part of India, is an unlikely place for cutting-edge blockchain innovation. The city runs on mining and agriculture where residents follow the ancient Indian philosopher Swami Vivekananda. 

With coal and minerals in abundance, the region also attracts bad actors trying to monopolize its resources. Fake building certificates and illicit land grabbing are big problems, particularly when the verification process has historically taken up to two months, meaning illegal activity of buying and selling took place behind the scenes. 

To address the situation, the Raipur Municipal Corporation knew they needed to enhance transparency, reduce corruption and improve administrative efficiencies. One of the corporation’s technically minded Commissioners, Abinash Mishra, thought blockchain, with its immutable and public record of transactions, could be the solution. Following the success of India’s flagship program, the Digital India Initiative, which helped advance the nation and increase willingness to adopt emerging technologies, Mishra and his team gave it a shot. 

Institutions lack willingness, not knowledge 

The corporation put out a request for a blockchain-based fix that could automate verifications efficiently in a single platform on their website. Airchains answered with their solution: Zero-Knowledge Fully Homomorphic Encryption, or zk-FHE. 

According to Ankur Sinha, Airchains chief executive officer, by leveraging zk-FHE, the Raipur Municipal Corporation can ensure that data is not only secure but also private. This allows for verifiable computations without compromising sensitive information. 

“Enterprises and projects that have sensitive data are hesitant to put it on chain because of privacy concerns,” Sinha said to me in a recent interview.  “We noticed a high number of consumer-based apps or dApps that require privacy but want to keep data on chain and weren’t able to due to a lack of technology to make it scalable and on chain, but private at the same time. This is what zk-FHE does.”

The next step is to digitize Raipur’s old certificates, Sinha said. He added that the company has received requests from other municipalities, a sign of the growing appetite for blockchain technology solutions. 

Sinha believes the demand will continue to increase once crypto is regulated in India – a conversation that’s currently picking up steam. 

Sinha said this is just the tip of the iceberg with what they can do and won’t stop with just certifications. “Think utilities, carbon credit settlement, nature resource management, real estate, health records, and supply chain,” he said. 

Airchains has a track record of rolling out initiatives with government institutions in other parts of India, Bangladesh and South Asia. Sinha believes zk-FHE is going to change the digital landscape globally and will hit its stride with consumer-based adoption. zk-FHE can play a critical role in terms of traceability and transparency, such as payment settlements. 

“Implementing zk-FHE can directly affect consumer-based applications, be it shopping, paying fines, and accessing insurance,” he said. “You can pay a toll tax without revealing the fines or ticket trails on your vehicle, for example.” 

If an Indian government can deploy the latest transparency techniques, so should the applications we use every day.