India's AI Moment: Why Strategy Must Precede Mission
AI is not the IT industry of the 1990s, where the government simply enabled private enterprise. AI will transform societies - its governance requires national deliberation
This column is based on the Foundation's report: Governing AI in India: Why Strategy Must Precede Mission. The complete report is available at: https://tinyurl.com/FutureofIndiaAI
India has declared its ambition to be a global leader in artificial intelligence governance. As the world's largest democracy and a tech-savvy nation, it is well-positioned to champion an inclusive and human-centric approach to AI. But this aspiration risks being undermined by a critical gap: the absence of a comprehensive, democratically anchored national AI strategy.
India's current AI initiatives center on the IndiaAI Mission, led by a bureaucrat and housed as an independent unit within a Section 8 company under MEITY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology). However, the Mission cannot substitute for a national strategy. Missions are typically vehicles for executing priorities—but only after those priorities have been clearly defined.
In India's approach to AI, fundamental questions remain unresolved: What are our national priorities? Which governance values should guide us? How should institutions be structured? Moving forward without answering these questions creates two distinct risks. First, it may compromise India's ability to lead and maintain strategic autonomy. Second, it may embeds an AI governance model that is technocratic, opaque, and lacking democratic legitimacy.
This is not an abstract concern. Several pressing risks are already visible.
Strategic Autonomy at Stake
AI technologies are becoming increasingly embedded within India's defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure systems. Recent military conflicts have underscored growing operational dependence on AI-enabled platforms. Without an indigenous, coordinated AI strategy, India faces the risk of strategic dependencies on foreign technologies—dependencies that could constrain our ability to act independently during future geopolitical crises.
International developments highlight this risk. The US-Russia standoff and weaponization of financial infrastructure have demonstrated how technological dependencies can be leveraged to achieve geopolitical objectives. Rising tensions over tariff policies and strategic technology competition further illustrate this risk landscape.
In an increasingly AI-driven global environment, technological dependencies translate into strategic vulnerabilities. Safeguarding India's strategic autonomy requires developing a whole-of-government AI strategy aligned with national security priorities and focused on building resilient, sovereign capabilities.
Governance of Public Data
Data is the raw material of AI. As India builds public data platforms, how this data is curated, accessed, and governed will shape both innovation and market power. Without transparent, democratically debated data governance frameworks, these ecosystems risk reinforcing corporate concentration and undermining public trust.
Employment Disruption: The Unaddressed Crisis
Nowhere is the governance gap clearer than in employment. Automation is already transforming India's labor market. In 2024 alone, India's top three IT services firms - TCS, Infosys, and Wipro - shed nearly 65,000 jobs, their first major contraction in two decades. The HCL CEO's recent speech at a national IT summit on the impact of AI articulated the need to "generate twice the revenue with half the workforce" signalling an era of accelerated disruption.
The numbers are stark. The IMF estimates that 26% of India's workforce is exposed to generative AI, with 12% at risk of displacement. International experts warn that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in coming years.
Despite this, current national AI initiatives do not sufficiently address employment transition, workforce planning, or social protections. The absence of structured input from labor economists, civil society, and workforce experts has limited the ambit of deliberation to technocratic concerns. Addressing these gaps is critical to ensuring that AI adoption supports broad-based economic resilience and social stability.
The Overlooked Energy Question
AI is extraordinarily energy-hungry. Training and running large AI models require vast computing power, consuming enormous quantities of electricity and water for cooling data centers. The International Energy Agency projects that global data center electricity demand - driven heavily by AI - will double by 2030. Training GPT-3 alone required approximately 700,000 liters of freshwater in Microsoft's U.S. data centers.
This poses acute challenges for India. Eleven of our 20 largest cities face acute water stress, with cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad - both emerging AI and data center hubs - experiencing rapidly declining groundwater levels. Yet India's AI policy discussions have scarcely addressed the energy and resource implications of scaling AI. Without alignment between AI growth, energy planning, and climate commitments, India risks building unsustainable AI infrastructure - deepening both environmental and political risks.
Societal Transitions Need National Deliberation
AI will profoundly reshape work, education, and the social contract. It will determine which skills are valued, influence how citizens are trained, and shape who benefits from economic gains. These shifts cannot be left to market forces or a handful of technical experts. They demand inclusive national dialogue involving parliamentarians, industry leaders, educators, civil society, and labor representatives to chart a just and equitable path forward.
Public Trust and Regulatory Coherence
As AI integrates into sensitive domains—healthcare, policing, welfare—the risks of bias, discrimination, and lost accountability grow. Without clear regulatory frameworks and public debate, public trust in AI governance may erode, increasing the risk of societal backlash.
Global Leadership Demands Domestic Readiness
India has rightly positioned itself as a voice for the Global South in international AI governance forums, notably through its leadership in the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI). But global credibility depends on coherence at home. Without a transparent, democratically grounded national strategy, India's ability to shape global AI norms will remain constrained.
Strategy and National Consensus Must Precede Mission
These gaps underscore a central principle: strategy must precede mission. India's policymakers must recognize that AI is not the IT industry of the 1990s, where the government simply enabled private enterprise. Nor is it just another sectoral technology. AI is a transformative, general-purpose technology that will redefine national security, economic structures, and societal relations.
Harnessing AI for national leadership and public good requires proactive, strategic, and coordinated governance. Managing this transition demands inclusive, forward-looking, and democratically accountable governance anchored in a national strategy shaped through open public deliberation.
The Path Forward
India needs three immediate steps. First, publish a Cabinet-endorsed national AI strategy and present it to Parliament. Second, constitute a dedicated Standing Committee on AI and Emerging Technologies in Parliament to oversee executive initiatives, ethical risks, and public consultations. Third, commission a national impact study on AI-driven employment disruption, particularly in entry-level white-collar roles, with granular data on sectors, demographics, and regions
The choice is clear: we can proceed with missions lacking strategic foundation, or we can take the time to build the democratic consensus and institutional architecture that will make India a genuine AI leader. The latter path is harder but far more likely to succeed.