Why in news?
The Union Cabinet approved a multi‑year IndiaAI Mission in September 2025 with a budget of over ₹10,000 crore. The mission aims to build a national AI compute infrastructure, support startups and develop ethical guidelines. This marks a significant step as countries worldwide invest heavily in artificial intelligence to gain economic and strategic advantage.
India’s digital springboard
Over the past decade, India created a robust digital public infrastructure: more than one billion people use smartphones, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processes billions of transactions monthly, and the Aadhaar identity system covers most residents. These platforms provide vast datasets and a testing ground for AI applications. However, India lags behind the United States and China in research output and funding.
Opportunities for AI in India
- Healthcare: AI can assist doctors in diagnosing diseases, predicting outbreaks and managing hospital resources, especially in rural areas lacking specialists.
- Education: Adaptive learning systems can personalise instruction in different languages, help teachers track progress and make education more inclusive.
- Agriculture: AI‑driven weather forecasts, soil analysis and crop advisory services can improve yields and reduce input costs for farmers.
- Financial inclusion: Algorithms can assess creditworthiness of people without formal credit history, enabling small loans and insurance products.
- Disaster management: AI models can predict floods, landslides and cyclones, allowing earlier evacuations.
Challenges and constraints
- Infrastructure gap: High‑performance computing requires expensive graphics processing units (GPUs) and reliable electricity, which are scarce in many Indian institutions.
- Research funding: Public spending on AI research lags far behind leading countries, and private investment is concentrated in a few tech hubs.
- Talent shortage: While India produces many engineers, there is a shortage of specialists in machine learning and data science. Brain drain exacerbates the gap.
- Regulation and ethics: AI systems can reproduce social biases and pose privacy risks. India lacks clear standards on data protection, accountability and explainability.
- Geopolitical competition: Dominant AI platforms are controlled by foreign corporations, raising concerns about dependency and digital sovereignty.
What needs to be done
- Increase research funding: Government and industry should jointly fund laboratories, scholarships and open‑source projects.
- Develop human capital: Universities must redesign curricula to teach AI fundamentals, and programmes should encourage women and under‑represented groups to enter the field.
- Create fair policies: A comprehensive data protection law and guidelines on algorithmic fairness and accountability will build trust in AI.
- Public–private partnerships: Start‑ups, academia and government agencies should collaborate to build compute infrastructure and share datasets while respecting privacy.
- Global engagement: India can participate in international forums to shape norms, promote cross‑border research and ensure access to advanced technologies.
Artificial intelligence offers transformative potential. With the IndiaAI Mission, the country seeks not only to catch up but to build AI solutions tailored to its linguistic diversity and development needs.