This article draws from both domestic and international policy documents and global analyses and explains how India is strategically positioning itself strategically between the two AI superpowers of the U.S. and China.
The rapid expansion of digital technologies has revolutionised modern life, yet vulnerable groups such as primary school-aged children and retirees remain disproportionately exposed to cyber threats. While these groups are the focus of this policy proposal due to their distinct
challenges—children facing risks such as cyberbullying, and retirees vulnerable to losing their hard-earned life savings to scams—this in no way diminishes the importance of cyber literacy for other demographics.
The United States’ rapid abandonment of conflict-ridden countries will only escalate the peripheral status of these nations, causing a great deal of pain to women, children, and the gender diverse individuals, who are already marginalized. It becomes all the more essential to divulge in talks on feminist foreign policies that need to be put on the forefront, to stand against gender apartheid, on a global scale.
Even as bright minds in Indian information technology debate whether India should focus on creating applications using existing artificial intelligence (AI) models or spend time and energy developing foundational models and carrying out fundamental research, there is one area of indisputable consensus.
The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has profound implications for national security and defense.
The Union Budget 2025-26 has allocated approximately 10% more funds to the health sector compared with the last budget. While this increase signals a continued focus on healthcare, it is important to assess it in the right context. A significant portion of the increased allocation in previous years was due to one-time expenditures such as COVID-19 vaccination and other emergency pandemic response measures.
India is going to make available cloud computing capacity to researchers and industry at ultra-low costs per compute (jargon for a single computational operation, like running a specific algorithm). The idea is sound, and needs to be implemented, and scaled up. But it will not prevent India still being a laggard in AI.