INDIA’S BLOCKCHAIN JOURNEY: Issues and Challenges

PROFILES OF PANELISTS  

Mr. Santosh K Misra is Commissioner of Transport and Road safety in Government of Tamil Nadu. Till  recently he was the commissioner of e-Governance, and CEO of Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency. He  has a deep technological background with over 24 years of work experience and he is recognised as a  Public Policy and Technology expert. He has an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of  Minnesota, USA and a Bachelor of Technology from IIT Kanpur, India with specialisation in Digital Signal  Processing and Communication technology. He is at present pursuing a PhD and his research topic is  “Public policy challenges of Artificial Intelligence”. He has conceptualised and laid the foundation for  some pathbreaking initiatives in Govt of Tamil Nadu. First, is the AI for improved governance in the  areas of education, healthcare and agriculture. He has created a Center of Excellence in Emerging  Technology in Govt of Tamil Nadu and has built a team of experts for developing low cost, scalable  solutions for Governance using AI, Blockchain and IoT. Applications like AI based Cataract detection,  Crop pest and disease identification, Natural Language Processing, Computer vision etc are already in  operation. Second, is the building of a Statewide Tamil Nadu Blockchain backbone. This along with the  State Family Data Base would provide “Predictive Service delivery” to the citizens. This aims to  revolutionise the way govt services are delivered to citizens and it would create a consent based  anywhere, anytime G2C service for the residents of the state without them having to approach any  government office. He is an avid photographer and has published a coffee table book, “Spirit of Kumbh”  from his fascinating visual capture of several Maha-kumbh festivals. The book is available on amazon. 

Mr. Jayesh Ranjan is the Principal Secretary of the Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information  Technology (IT) Departments of the Telangana government. His assignment involves developing policy  frameworks, attracting new investments, identifying opportunities for utilizing IT in various government  processes, and promoting the digital empowerment of the citizens. His last few assignments have been  in the Industrial Promotion sector as Commissioner and MD of the Industries Department, Secretary in  the Tourism Promotion Department, and Vice-Chairman of the Hyderabad Urban Development  Authority (HUDA), all for 2-3 years each, and various rural assignments in different parts of the state  for over 12 years, working in diverse sectors like Tribal Development, Natural Resources Management,  Poverty Alleviation and other related Social Development Sectors. He holds a Master’s Degree in  Psychology from Delhi University, a degree in Business Management from the Indian Institute of  Management, Calcutta, and a Master’s in Public Management from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public  Policy, National University of Singapore. 

Mr. Neeraj Kumar is B.Tech. in Electronics and Post Graduate in Public Policy & Management from IIM Bangalore. He has spear headed many new services & product launches, which have been a game changer in the Telco Industry, including the first to launch large nation-wide MPLS/IP network, mass scale Broadband Rollout, ‘Intelligent Network’ Services, 3G Value Added Services like video on demand&Mobile TV. He was also responsible for launch of Mobile Money Transfer, Mobile Wallet services and Mobile advertisement services. He is passionate about M Governance and handling the UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) project, which was dedicated to the nation by Hon’ble Prime Minister of India on 23rd Nov. 2017. UMANG, a single mobile app, with ~35 million user base, provides 1279+ G2C services from 259 departments and 32 States and 20,000+ bill payment services. UMANG bagged the ‘Best m-Government service’ award in the 6th World Government Summit held at Dubai, UAE in February 2018 and many other awards. He is also working on Artificial Intelligence based platform for UMANG services delivery through conversational Chat/Voice BoT.

Mr. Anuj Garg is currently working as a Blockchain Expert (Transformation and Bizops Leader) with 19  years of rich IT experience at IBM corporation. Mr. Garg is a senior Transformational and Visionary  Leader experienced in Business / P&L Leadership, IT solutions, Service Delivery, Client Management,  Account Management, Transformation, Acquisition Integration, Re-Engineering, immaculate Process  Excellence credentials. He started his carrier as Software Engineer in DCM Technologies Ltd., in 2000.  He also worked a Project Manager at Infosys & WOW-Vision Pte Limited. Mr. Garg joined IBM as Project  Manager in 2009.  

Ms. Indrani Saha is currently the Technology Head, Blockchain Practice at Cognizant. She began her  career with Tata Consultancy Services, in the firm’s financial product suite development team, known  as TCS BaNCS. She later joined Cognizant in 2004 as part of banking and financial services business Unit.  Through her 26+ years of corporate experience, she has dabbled in assignments in architecture  definition and assessment, system design, and deployment of large and complex IT systems in banking  and financial services across the globe. She began working with Blockchain projects around six years  ago with a charter that includes exploration of new frameworks emerging in the Blockchain/Distributed  Ledger space, while solving business problems with this collaborative and connected network  technology and leading enterprise grade solution adoption for customers. She completed her master’s  degree in Electronics Engineering with specialisation in Computer Science from Jadavpur University,  after graduating from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur.