The Indian judiciary is crumbling under the weight of pending cases. More than 28 million cases are pending in the country’s district courts. Of these, more than 7.5 million are civil cases, and Bengaluru-based NGO Daksh’s data shows that more than 66% of the civil cases are related to land or property. In this context, the Andhra Pradesh government’s steps to use blockchain technology for land titling are a laudable development. Blockchain technology is at the forefront of a technological shift called disintermediation; the removal of intermediaries in exchange process that enables people to transact in a peer-to-peer fashion based on the trust provided by blockchain. Blockchain allows the government to maintain a public ledger of asset-ownership in a distributed fashion. The data is stored on a network of devices and there is no central point of failure. It ensures trust by being transparent—it is visible for everyone to verify. At the same time, it ensures privacy for the owner by ensuring that the ownership of the asset only changes hands after authorization. Secure land ownership will prove immensely beneficial for India’s poor. The prosperity of Western nations can be traced to the security provided to property by the formal legal system. Blockchain has the potential to end the days of large-scale property-related litigation.

(Live Mint)