New Delhi, Jan. 29 -- India's artificial intelligence journey is taking shape from the grassroots, with local innovators, start-ups, civic bodies and research institutions deploying AI to tackle immediate, real-world challenges, according to the Economic Survey 2025-26.
Highlighting a distinctly bottom-up pattern of adoption, the Survey notes that AI applications are emerging across health, agriculture, education, urban management and disaster preparedness, often designed for low-resource environments and local language contexts.
In southern India, "non-invasive AI-enabled thermal imaging tools" are being used for early breast cancer screening, while in eastern India "portable and low-cost AI-assisted oral cancer screening devices" are br...