In a recent LiveMint column, V Anantha Nageswaran and Debjani Ghosh argue that the global artificial intelligence race is shifting from building frontier models to scaling their adoption across economies. While the United States leads in cutting-edge AI development and China in system-wide deployment, India’s opportunity lies in leveraging its digital public infrastructure, vast MSME ecosystem, and the need for inclusive, vernacular solutions.
The authors stress that India must prioritise interoperable data systems, open architectures, and coordinated institutional frameworks to enable widespread AI diffusion. They caution that fragmented governance, siloed datasets, and weak last-mile delivery could hinder progress if left unaddressed.
Quoting their central insight, they note that leadership in AI will increasingly depend on “diffusion at scale” rather than innovation alone. With decisive execution, they argue, India can emerge as a global model for “democratised intelligence”, embedding AI across governance, enterprise, and citizen services”advancing productivity, service delivery, and technological sovereignty in line with the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision.
