India stands at a pivotal juncture in the global technological landscape. Our ambition to emerge as a superpower in the burgeoning era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to secure our place in the critical race for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is not merely a technological or economic pursuit. It is, fundamentally, a profound quest for digital sovereignty, deeply rooted in our civilisational ethos of Swadeshi (self-reliance) and Swaraj (self-rule). This vision is powerfully shaped by strategic lessons learned over centuries, most notably from the cautionary tale of our colonial past.

The trajectory of the British East India Company (EIC) offers a chilling historical parallel. From a trading entity, the EIC morphed into a quasi-state, systematically undermining India’s sovereignty and extracting immense wealth through commercial means. This historical experience serves as a stark reminder against unchecked external influence and economic exploitation, a lesson that finds alarming resonance in today’s digital sphere.

The Specter of Digital Colonialism

Today, we face a new form of external control: digital colonialism. Our pervasive reliance on a handful of foreign, predominantly US-based, tech giants for vital digital infrastructure – from cloud services to operating systems, search engines, and AI tools – poses a direct and escalating threat to our national interests.

Consider these critical strategic lessons, now recast in the digital domain:

• Guarding Against Unchecked Corporate Power: Just as the EIC wielded commercial power to undermine sovereignty, modern tech giants can exert unilateral control. The abrupt suspension of Microsoft services to Nayara Energy due to US sanctions unequivocally exposed how critical digital infrastructure can be unilaterally severed by foreign corporations enforcing external political agendas. Our digital destiny must be governed by our own values and needs, not dictated by external technological paradigms.
• Countering Economic Exploitation and Data Drain: Historically, the EIC extracted India’s raw materials and wealth, leading to deindustrialisation and economic subjugation. Today, foreign tech giants facilitate a “data drain”. While India generates approximately 20% of the world’s data, only about 10% is stored locally, with the vast majority flowing to foreign clouds for processing. This creates a critical “data gap” for indigenous AI development, perpetuating reliance on foreign-developed, potentially biased, Large Language Models (LLMs). Reclaiming control over this “oil” for indigenous AI is imperative for our innovation and value creation.
• Reversing the Erosion of Indigenous Capacity and Brain Drain: The EIC’s policies systematically eroded India’s indigenous capacity, creating profound dependency. Similarly, India faces a significant “brain drain” of top-tier AI research talent to foreign nations, exacerbated by relatively low R&D spending (0.7% of GDP). We risk continuously training talent for other nations, limiting our capacity for foundational AI innovation.
• Preventing Cultural and Cognitive Colonisation: Colonialism involved marginalising indigenous knowledge systems and cultural values. Today, foreign AI models, often trained on non-local datasets, frequently fail to cater effectively to India’s multilingual population and socio-cultural diversity, leading to “culturally inaccurate outputs” and “digital marginalisation”. This constitutes a form of “data colonialism” where Indian data is exploited to reinforce and disseminate anti-Indic narratives. Developing “Made in India” Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific foundational models is a strategic imperative for cultural preservation and self-determination in the digital age.
• Building Resilience Against Geopolitical Vulnerabilities: The EIC’s political control established dependencies that could be weaponised. Similarly, our reliance on foreign cloud infrastructure, operating systems, and AI tools creates significant geopolitical vulnerabilities. US export controls on advanced semiconductors, for instance, limit our access to critical AI technologies and our ability to scale compute infrastructure. This directly impacts our ability to develop cutting-edge models and necessitates accelerated indigenous GPU development and semiconductor manufacturing to prevent “digital blockades”.

India’s Blueprint for AI Superpower Status: Digital Swaraj in Action

To counter these threats and achieve its vision of AI/AGI leadership, India is pursuing a comprehensive and integrated policy framework for sovereign AI leadership, a distinct “third path” consciously diverging from the US’s private-sector-driven and China’s state-directed models. This path champions an “AI for All” vision, emphasising accessible, equitable, and socially impactful AI applications tailored to our unique realities.

• Strategic Investment in Indigenous Compute and Data Infrastructure: The Mission aims to establish a scalable AI computing ecosystem with over 18,693 GPUs, with actual acquisitions reaching 34,333 GPUs. It offers highly subsidised access at ₹100 per hour, a substantial reduction compared to global costs of $2.5-$3 per hour. Efforts are underway to develop indigenous GPUs within 3-5 years and significantly boost semiconductor manufacturing. Furthermore, the IndiaAI Datasets Platform (AIKosh) is being created as a unified hub for high-quality, India-specific, anonymised public datasets, addressing the critical “data gap” for indigenous AI development.
• Promoting Indigenous Foundational Models: Developing “Made in India” LMMs and domain-specific foundational models (e.g., BharatGen, Sarvam-1, Hanooman’s Everest 1.0) explicitly trained on Indian datasets is critical for linguistic, cultural, and contextual relevance, preventing “digital marginalisation”. An open-source-first approach is encouraged to foster inclusivity and customisation for Indian languages.
• Cultivating a World-Class AI Talent Pool: Despite India boasting the world’s second-largest AI talent pool (approx. 420,000 professionals) and leading in AI skill penetration, a significant “brain drain” and skill gap persist. India is implementing aggressive strategies to retain top-tier AI researchers, including competitive programmes like “Frontier Fellows”, revamping academic curricula, and offering tax incentives for deep-tech AI startups and skill development.
• Proactive and Adaptive AI Governance: India currently adopts a “soft-touch” regulatory approach to foster innovation but recognises the need for clear, comprehensive, and adaptive legal frameworks. This involves a risk-based regulatory approach, establishing bodies like the IndiaAI Safety Institute, clarifying legal liability for AI-driven harms, modernising Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for AI-generated content, and expanding regulatory sandboxes. An Inter-Ministerial AI Coordination Committee is also being set up to harmonise efforts.
• Leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) 2.0: India’s existing DPI (e.g., Aadhaar, UPI) provides a robust foundation for scaling AI applications inclusively. The vision for “DPI 2.0” involves building open-source AI APIs for Indic languages, explainability, and bias detection, positioning DPI as India’s AI operating system for inclusive growth and empowerment.
• Championing Global South AI Diplomacy: India is actively shaping the global discourse on AI governance as a founding member and lead chair of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI). It advocates for a “Global South” narrative, emphasising accessibility, equity, and responsible impact, positioning itself as a leader for developing nations in shaping international norms and preventing technological hegemony. The India AI Impact Summit in February 2026 aims to shift the global conversation from mere “safety” to “impact” and implementation for the Global South.

The economic stakes are immense, with AI projected to contribute over $967 billion to the Indian economy by 2035.

While India’s ambitious IndiaAI Mission, with its substantial ₹10,300 crore allocation, lays a strong foundation, the sheer velocity of the global AI race and the exponential pace of technological advancement demand an even greater urgency. Currently, India’s AI compute capacity of 148 petaflops remains significantly lower than the US’s 5,200 petaflops, representing a stark 35-fold deficit. Despite generating 20% of the world’s data, India possesses only 3% of global data centre capacity, and holds less than 1% of global AI patents compared to the US and China’s combined 80% share. Furthermore, some indigenous initiatives, like AIKosh and BharatGen, were observed to be reactive, spurred by advancements in other nations, highlighting a need for more proactive foresight. Our nation’s R&D spending, at a meagre 0.7% of GDP, further compounds this gap, being among the lowest globally. To avoid the “opportunity cost” of permanent relegation to an “AI consumer” status and continued digital dependence, India must not only sustain but aggressively accelerate its efforts, aiming to match, and ideally exceed, the pace of global leaders. The historical imperative for Swaraj demands nothing less than decisive, rapid action to secure our digital destiny.

By taking decisive action on these strategic fronts, India aims to overcome its technological dependencies, harness its immense potential, and chart a sovereign path to global AI leadership, ensuring that AI truly works for India and for all its citizens, reflecting our deep civilisational ethos of self-reliance and global responsibility. The journey to digital Swaraj will be a marathon, not a sprint, but our historical lessons demand nothing less than decisive action.