Sukumar Sah
NEW DELHI: A new, well-rounded face of artificial intelligence (AI) has now come into its own. The high profile, high stakes India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi from February 16 to 20, has given a clear-cut signal which underscores policy clarity, industrial ambition and a firm geopolitical stance, all rolled into one.
Artificial intelligence, Government leaders made clear, is no longer a start-up theme or software layer — it is being elevated to the status of core national infrastructure.
Attended by heads of state, global technology executives, investors and young innovators in numbers that underlined the scale of ambition, the summit highlight was the messaging of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who framed AI as a transformative force that must be “human-centric, transparent and rooted in democratic values.”
In a keynote address that set the intellectual tone, Modi unveiled what he called the “MANAV Vision” for AI — an acronym for Moral and ethical systems, Accountable governance, National sovereignty, Accessible and inclusive, and Valid and legitimate frameworks. “AI must be a tool for inclusive growth and human empowerment, not exclusion,” he said, arguing that while AI should be given “an open sky,” the reins must remain firmly in human hands.
He warned against allowing humans to become mere data points or raw material, calling for the democratisation of AI so that it serves the Global South and not just advanced economies.
Stressing the destabilising risks of deep fakes and fabricated content, he advocated global standards, watermarking systems and authenticity labels to build trust into digital ecosystems from the start. The real question, he said, is not what AI can do in the future, but what societies choose to do with it now.
The summit’s deeper shift lay in how AI was positioned economically. Policymakers repeatedly described compute capacity, secure data centres and trusted digital frameworks as “the new highways of development.” Artificial intelligence is being treated not as an extension of India’s IT services industry, but as foundational capacity — comparable to power grids, telecom networks or logistics corridors.
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw underscored that AI would be deployed “at population scale,” targeting agriculture, healthcare, education and public service delivery. India’s AI strategy rests on expanding compute access through public-private partnerships, supporting indigenous foundational models trained on Indian languages, and embedding AI into governance systems.
Officials have projected more than $200 billion in AI-related investments over the next two years — spanning semiconductors, data centres, cloud infrastructure and services.
The corporate signals were equally bold. The Adani Group announced plans to invest $100 billion by 2035 in green-powered, AI-ready data centres, with the potential to catalyse an additional $150 billion across server manufacturing and advanced electrical systems.
Industry leaders argued that without reliable power, fibre connectivity and regulatory clarity, India risks missing the compounding advantages of early infrastructure build-out. The language was unmistakable: compute is the new capital stock.
Global technology executives lent weight to the narrative. Sam Altman spoke of India’s rapid AI adoption and its potential as both market and innovation hub. Microsoft President Brad Smith, Google DeepMind CEO Dennis Hassabis and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani were among those present, signalling private-sector interest in long-term partnerships.
The summit also carried strong geopolitical undertones. Eleven European heads of state or government — including Spain, France, Finland and Estonia — attended, marking the largest European delegation to a technology-focused event in India. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the summit as a potential turning point in shaping global AI governance.
The test of leadership in Artificial Intelligence will lie not only in how fast India builds, but in how wisely it governs, distributes and safeguards this transformative power. In AI, as in all revolutions, speed must be balanced with stewardship
Bilateral meetings on the margins focused not only on AI collaboration but also on accelerating the India-EU free trade agreement, reinforcing the strategic dimension of the gathering.
In an era defined by US-China technological rivalry, India appears to be carving out a hybrid path: state-enabled infrastructure with private participation, framed within a development-first and democratic narrative.
Unlike Western debates centred on frontier research dominance, New Delhi’s emphasis has been on scale of deployment — AI-assisted crop advisories, public health diagnostics, logistics optimisation and language localisation across hundreds of dialects.
The push for multilingual AI models was particularly prominent. By training foundational models on Indian languages, policymakers aim to prevent AI benefits from being confined to English-speaking urban elites. Inclusion, in this framing, is not rhetorical but infrastructural.
More structurally, significant challenges remain. Hyper scale AI facilities are energy-intensive, requiring reliable 24/7 electricity. While green-powered AI parks are being promoted, grid stability and transmission capacity will determine whether clusters operate at global standards.
Advanced GPUs and semiconductor supply chains remain geopolitically sensitive, and domestic chip manufacturing is still nascent. Without steady hardware access, sovereign compute ambitions could face constraints.
What emerged from the four days, therefore, was less a series of product launches and more a long-term economic vision. India is seeking to move beyond exporting technology services toward owning elements of the AI value chain — from compute infrastructure to indigenous models. In doing so, it is attempting to reconcile ambition with accountability, scale with sovereignty, and innovation with ethics.