Self-reliant AI will empower citizens, strengthen security, fuel start-ups, and give India a seat at the global high table of technology.
By K S Tomar
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as the most transformative technology of the 21st century, shaping industries, economies, and societies at lightning speed. For India, with its 1.4 billion people, the question is not whether to adopt AI, but whether to develop sovereign capabilities that are “Made in India, for India and the world.” The urgency stems from economic, cultural, and security considerations. If India fails to achieve Aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) status in AI, it risks being reduced to a passive consumer of systems powered by its own data but owned and monetized by foreign corporations.
India, therefore, stands at a critical juncture: to build indigenous AI infrastructure and applications that reflect its values, languages, and aspirations, or to remain dependent on others. The stakes are high, and the rewards of leadership are immense.
Why should India develop its own AI?
Three primary reasons make sovereign AI indispensable for India.
First, economic independence and innovation. A domestic AI ecosystem will boost start-ups, attract private investment, and reduce dependence on foreign corporations. China, for instance, has banned Nvidia chips to strengthen local chip-making. India, too, must use AI to fuel its own innovation cycle rather than outsourcing it.
Second, cultural and linguistic inclusivity. India’s diversity demands AI systems that can understand its dozens of languages, dialects, and cultural contexts. A generic global AI tool cannot capture the nuances of a farmer in Bihar, a student in Nagaland, or a small business owner in Kerala. Indigenous AI can democratize access by building tools that are not only accurate in English but also fluent in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, and beyond.
Third, national security. AI built abroad may embed hidden vulnerabilities. Sovereign capability ensures that government, defense, and critical infrastructure run on transparent, auditable systems. National security cannot be outsourced.
In short, Aatmanirbhar AI is not just about technology—it is about self-respect, strategic autonomy, and ensuring that India’s digital destiny is not dictated by Silicon Valley or Beijing.
US–India synergy in next-stage AI
The United States and India are moving from parallel AI efforts to a practical partnership that blends policy-level frameworks, shared R&D, and infrastructure investment: through the US–India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) and joint leaders’ statements, they coordinate standards, talent exchanges, and research roadmaps while funding university and lab collaborations. On the finance and infrastructure side, India has committed about $1.25 billion to national AI projects (compute, LLM development, start-ups and public-sector apps), while US policy (notably the CHIPS & Science Act) channels roughly $200 billion into semiconductor and advanced-research programs that underpin AI hardware and cloud capabilities — with individual CHIPS awards (for example Micron’s ~$6.2 billion award) highlighting capital flows to critical supply chains. Complementing this, targeted US–India grant programs seed joint projects on socially beneficial AI and capacity building, while both governments are sketching roadmaps to co-finance AI infrastructure, talent programmes, and trustworthy AI standards.
The challenges if India lags behind
The risks of inaction are equally profound. Digital dependence: Without indigenous AI, India will pay to use models trained on its own data. This creates a digital dependency similar to energy imports—only more pervasive, since AI underpins every sector from finance to healthcare.
Economic disadvantage: Foreign AI firms, backed by billions in funding, can dump services at zero cost to capture Indian data. This predatory pricing undermines local competition and leads to wealth centralisation abroad.
Data vulnerability: If sensitive user data flows outside India, it can be misused for profiling, surveillance, or commercial exploitation. This raises privacy and security concerns at a national scale.
Technological lag: Currently, OpenAI and Nvidia are scaling towards 10 gigawatts of GPU capacity, while India has barely 30,000 GPUs. Unless bridged, this gap will leave India technologically handicapped in the AI race.
Strategic risk: Closed-source AI models, with non-auditable behaviors, could malfunction or be manipulated at critical moments. Depending on foreign infrastructure for governance or defence is a recipe for vulnerability.
Impact on people and society
AI will profoundly impact how Indians live and work. For students and teachers, indigenous AI can make quality learning material available in local languages, breaking the urban-rural digital divide. Initiatives like the Swayam platform can be integrated with sovereign AI to personalise education.
For farmers and small businesses, AI can deliver weather forecasts, price trends, and credit assessments in vernacular languages through mobile apps or voice assistants. This democratises information and empowers rural India.
For citizens, AI-driven public infrastructure will simplify access to government schemes, health services, and legal aid. Imagine asking a chatbot in Punjabi about pension eligibility or in Tamil about crop subsidies—without bureaucratic hurdles.
For workers, while AI may displace some repetitive jobs, it will also create new ones in model development, data annotation, and AI-based services. India’s young demographic, if trained in AI skills, can seize this opportunity to lead the global workforce.
For society at large, AI can strengthen inclusivity, but only if designed responsibly. Otherwise, it may deepen inequalities if rural or low-income citizens are left behind. Aatmanirbhar AI ensures equitable reach, avoiding monopolistic control by foreign corporations.
Pathways to progress
For India to succeed, it must act decisively on three fronts—data, computing power, and talent. Data localization and standards. All AI models operating in India must run on infrastructure hosted within the country, ensuring no user data leaves Indian borders. This will attract private investment and safeguard privacy. Scaling computing power. India must rapidly expand GPU capacity by encouraging domestic manufacturing and inviting global investment. Public–private partnerships can build “intelligence factories” that produce AI models just as steel plants once fuelled industrialization. Talent development. Skilling is the backbone of AI. Universities, start-ups, and research institutions must train engineers, ethicists, and policymakers in AI, with a focus on Indian languages and contexts. Digital Public Infrastructure for AI. Just as Aadhaar, UPI, and CoWIN became global benchmarks, India can create a sovereign AI platform integrating governance, education, and commerce. This would be an Indian innovation for the world.
The advantages of building Indian AI
Developing AI within India has multi-layered benefits that cut across the economy, governance, and society.
>> Empowering start-ups and MSMEs: India’s vibrant start-up ecosystem can use AI to solve local problems, from predicting crop yields to managing small supply chains. Indigenous AI lowers costs and levels the playing field, ensuring that small entrepreneurs are not priced out by expensive foreign services.
>> Protecting data sovereignty: Today, millions of Indians use platforms like ChatGPT, which collect vast amounts of conversational data. This data improves foreign models but leaves Indian firms behind. Indigenous AI will ensure that Indian data is used to train Indian models, creating a virtuous cycle of local improvement.
>> Enhancing governance: An AI-driven Digital Public Infrastructure can integrate government services—railway bookings, tourism, health records, school curricula, welfare schemes—into a seamless citizen-facing platform. A villager could ask a voice-based AI in their language about crop insurance, while a student could access NCERT content through the same system.
>> Accelerating economic growth: AI is estimated to add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. If India captures even a fraction of this, it can fuel job creation, increase productivity, and strengthen its manufacturing and services base.
>> Leapfrogging opportunity: In technology, late entrants often move faster by skipping pitfalls. India, rather than reinventing early mistakes of the West, can build scalable, responsible AI by learning from existing models and tailoring them to its needs.
Conclusion: Seizing the AI moment
AI is not just another wave of technology—it is the defining platform of the future. India has the talent, the market size, and the digital backbone to emerge as a major AI power. But without Aatmanirbhar AI, the nation risks becoming a colony in the digital age, exporting raw data and importing expensive services.
Self-reliant AI will empower citizens, strengthen security, fuel start-ups, and give India a seat at the global high table of technology. This is India’s AI moment—one that must be seized with vision, investment, and urgency.
(K S Tomar is a senior political analyst and strategic affairs columnist based in Shimla)
The views expressed are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times
