NEW DELHI, Nov. 3 -- With Artificial Intelligence being deployed across education, agriculture, healthcare and governance through government initiatives, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has stepped up efforts to build domestic capacities to ensure India's tech sovereignty in AI by taking up the comprehensive initiative "IndiaAI Mission'' which was approved by the Union Cabinet in March last year.
As the nodal ministry for implementing comprehensive programs that catalyze AI innovation and ensure responsible, transformative use of AI for all within the country, MeitY's AI ecosystem approach spans strategy, compute, datasets, skilling and governance.
India's AI roadmap began with the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in 2018 when the ministry had constituted four committees for promoting artificial intelligence initiatives and developing a policy framework. In 2019, the National Programme on AI was envisioned to organize work streams across data, skilling, compute and R&D. On the global platform, India was a founding member of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) and served as the Incoming Council Chair (2022) and Lead Chair for 2024. As a member, India contributed significantly to the forum's objective to advance human-centric, trustworthy AI.
The IndiaAI Mission comprises seven key pillars, each strategically designed to address critical components of the AI ecosystem. The seven pillars are - IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Foundation Models, AIKosh - Dataset Platform, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative (IADI), IndiaAI FutureSkills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI.
Since its launch, the Mission has made great strides and made significant contributions to the AI ecosystem of India. Over 38,000 GPUs have been empaneled which are being offered to end users at a nominal rate of Rs 65 per hour. Additionally, 12 proposals have been selected for developing foundational AI models for India. 30 AI solutions have been selected and are being supported across priority domains. The AIKosh datasets platform was launched with 3,000+ datasets, 240+ models, 28+ use cases across 20+ sectors, government sources said. AI Labs in collaboration with Industrial Partners have also been established.
Over 200 students have received the IndiaAI fellowship and 28 PhD applications approved thus far for the IndiaAI Research Fellowships for PhD. Trusted AI projects have been selected and are currently under development.
Several other initiatives being led by MeitY for enabling the AI ecosystem of India include the AIRAWAT-PSAI facility to provide AI compute resources. The National Language Translation Mission, Digital India Bhashini provides AI-driven language technology across 22 scheduled Indian languages, with 350+ AI models and 20+ language services. Outside of the initiatives of IndiaAI, AI skilling is supported by MeitY through FutureSkills Prime platform. FutureSkills Prime offers a variety of AI courses, covering foundational and advanced concepts in machine learning, deep learning, and Generative AI. Many courses feature industry-relevant training, hands-on projects, and certifications. Additionally, the AI for All course published by the government has been completed 3 million+ learners in 11 languages
Commenting on the approach followed by MeitY and IndiaAI for developing the AI ecosystem, S Krishnan, Secretary MeitY stated - "We have adopted innovative means by learning from the experiences of others to build viable projects and products that will truly make a difference for us. In partnership with the private sector, accessible to the public sector-ensuring a level-playing field for all providers-is both innovative and frugal. It ensures that with the least amount of resources we are able to ensure availability for all. A number of international agencies have also found our approach very appealing, to build a model which can be used for the rest of the global South."
As India tracks Viksit Bharat 2047, the communication is consistent-AI for All, AI for India, and AI for the world-delivered through domestic capacity, open standards and responsible governance.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.