Awesome post @firepower. I'm always interested in what India is doing lately. China gets all of the attention lately, but India is another rising superpower that will help shift some of the power centers away from the West.
Reading what you say about the banks' Bankchain initiative on blockchain, I was sort of chuckling to myself a little. I've sat in on corporate meetings where people talk about the latest buzz word, which just so happens to be blockchain these days, realizing that nobody knows a damn thing about it and that they're just posturing to show that they're "doing something to bring the company into the latest trend."
My guess is that they'll have to bring in consultants to have any hope of actually implementing the technology in their operations. Often times, these entrenched corporate structures are not flexible to the kinds of changes that would be suggested, so I'd be surprised if they did anything meaningful in the space other than set up exchanges and derivatives markets. We'll see though. Where there's money to be made, people do tend to find a way, but when it's a disruptive technology doing it, it tends to come from outside established companies.