A news report has been received that the National Power Training Institute, of the Ministry of power, Government of India is set to conduct a series of training programs ostensibly on “Block Chain”.
The Bitcoin community is going ga-ga about the development and headlined an article “Indian Government’s Institute offers Block chain training in multiple cities”.
Three programs have been scheduled according to the report on January 6-10 at Nangal, February 17-21 at Delhi and March 16-20 at Shivpuri.
The content of the program indicate sessions on Bitcoin and Mining with hands on sessions.
It is obvious that the promotion of “Block Chain” is a disguise to promote Bitcoin and in as much as Bitcoin and other Crypto currencies are considered the currency of the criminals and the Government is in the process of passing the bill for banning Crypto currencies and make it a criminal offence to conduct any transactions with crypto currencies, it is surprising and disappointing that an arm of the government of India should be devoting time and money on conducting such programs.
Conducting such programs for students and professors etc has no relation to the working of the power ministry and it is obvious that the resources of the power ministry are being diverted to this project because of the lobbyists from the Bitcoin community.
I have drawn the attention of the Minister of State in the Power ministry, the secretaries of Home and the IT and hope that this series of programs are cancelled forthwith.
Block chain may have some use cases in the power ministry but it is important to recognize that if Crypto currencies are made legal, India would be diverting a vast amount of power to the Bitcoin mining.
According to one estimate Bitcoin energy consumption presently is around TWh 45.165 and expected to reach around 73.12 TWh in 2020 which is comparable to a country like Austria. The carbon footprint at 34.73 Mt of Co2 is comparable to the carbon print of the entire country of Denmark and the e-waste generation at 9.62 kt comparable to the e-waste generation of Luxembourg.
Naavi.org has brought to the notice of the public several articles on bitcoin including he possible disastrous impact on the country.
I wish the Ministers and officials involved in the Ministry of Power, Home and IT wake up to the warnings and ensure that all training programs for promotion of Crypto currencies directly or indirectly indicated in the bitcoin.com article are stopped forthwith.
It would be better if the Home ministry and the IT ministry send out a suitable circular to other ministries to prevent such programs being conducted under the patronage of the Government.
Naavi
