As Maharashtra positions itself at the centre of India’s AI revolution, water security is emerging as an uncomfortable constraint. AI generated image The digital economy is often referred to as weightless. Streaming video from a smartphone. An artificial intelligence chatbot answers a question. A financial transaction takes only seconds to complete. A cloud server that contains millions of files. The average user views the internet as almost immaterial, in some virtual realm,

Artificial intelligence may change much, but perhaps not quite in the way its prophets and pessimists imagine. AI generated image Every discussion about artificial intelligence today seems destined to arrive at one of two destinations. The first is a gleaming utopia in which AI transforms every aspect of human existence, liberating people from drudgery and ushering in an era of unprecedented productivity. The second is a dystopia of mass unemployment, social unrest and econom

MMR A Data Centre Hub, Part – I Mumbai: The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) is rapidly emerging as the epicentre of India’s data centre revolution, with a combination of strategic location advantages, robust infrastructure and surging demand from artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing driving unprecedented investment into the region. As India’s data centre industry gears up to cross 3 gigawatts (GW) of operational capacity by 2028, according to CBRE’s 2026 Asia Pac

As Google’s Gemini Spark turns AI into a persistent digital intermediary, India’s governance framework risks falling dangerously behind. AI generated image Google’s unveiling of Gemini Spark at Google I/O 2026 is not just another AI product announcement. Spark is designed as a persistent personal agent that coordinates tasks across Gmail, Docs, Slides, and third-party platforms such as Canva and Instacart. Unlike earlier AI assistants that responded to isolated prompts, Spark

Without measuring contextual failure, India’s AI governance risks mistaking computational sophistication for genuine public utility. India’s AI governance framework has a measurement problem. The India AI Mission has onboarded more than 38,000 GPUs, allocated Rs 10,300 crore for AI infrastructure, and built AIKosh into a national dataset repository holding 7,541 datasets across 20 sectors. MeitY’s India AI Governance Guidelines, released on 5 November 2025, commit the governm

Chaitanya Giri’s erudite volume recasts India’s early modern past as a struggle over epistemic power. In 1802, as the East India Company consolidated its dominion over large parts of the subcontinent, a young officer named William Lambton began what would become the Great Trigonometrical Survey. Stretching over nearly seven decades, completed under George Everest by 1871, it was one of the most ambitious scientific enterprises of its age: a project to measure India with mathe

As artificial intelligence grows smarter and more efficient, the real battle may not be about machines surpassing humanity but about whether humans squander the qualities that still set them apart. With the recent news of a Chinese robot beating the human record in a half- marathon, there is renewed debate on how AI could outsmart human beings. Many experts see it as yet another proof of impending disaster as AI takes over most of the jobs in the years to come. This is not th

The rise of AI-generated speech is turning the human voice into both a technological marvel and a legal dilemma. For a long time, the human voice has been one of the most personal ways to tell who someone is. A tone, timbre, or even a scared giggle can tell us right away if we're talking to a friend, a parent, or a stranger. Artificial intelligence has messed up the one-to-one link between voice and person. Voice-cloning technology makes it possible to copy speech so well tha

AI generated image A recent article that I had authored titled ‘Why Teachers Matter More in the Age of AI’ drew thoughtful and encouraging responses from readers across diverse backgrounds. Many agreed that despite rapid advances in artificial intelligence, the role of the teacher remains not only relevant but essential. The response made clear that the question is no longer whether AI will change education, but how we must respond to that change. This naturally leads to a de

India’s rapid shift toward a digitally mediated financial system has delivered gains in efficiency, inclusion, and transaction speed. At the centre of this transformation is the Unified Payments Interface, now processing billions of transactions each month and functioning as the backbone of retail payments. This architecture improves access and reduces friction, but it also concentrates operational dependence within a tightly connected system where vulnerabilities can scale q

We live in a time where almost everything is just a tap away. Smartphones guide our travel, artificial intelligence answers our questions, and digital tools make daily life faster and easier than ever before. Convenience has become the defining feature of modern life. From ordering food to attending meetings, technology has transformed the way we live, work, and communicate. However, beneath this remarkable progress lies a quiet and often unnoticed loss-the gradual disappeara

As IT hiring collapses, India’s universities stand exposed as assembly lines for jobs that no longer exist. Consider three names. Google. Facebook. Dell. Each of them was built inside a college dormitory. Google was a doctoral project at Stanford in 1996; its parent company is today worth over three trillion dollars. Facebook was a side experiment in a Harvard dorm in 2004; it now reaches half the planet. Dell began in a University of Texas dormitory in 1984, assembled by a n

A growing concern is being felt in classrooms and faculty rooms. If students can access lectures from the best universities, solve problems using artificial intelligence, and get explanations within seconds, what is left for the teacher to do? Has the role of the teacher reached its limit? The concern is understandable, but it rests on a weak assumption. Information has become abundant. Understanding has not, and thinking, certainly not. For a long time, teachers were the mai

India’s AI curriculum broadens access, but risks widening the employability gap. India’s Economic Survey 2024-25 flagged the tension directly. Chief Economic Advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran noted that while technology eventually creates more jobs than it displaces, the critical period lies in between. That interval requires supporting institutions, changed academic curricula, and changed workplace practices. India’s AI education policy, rolled out through CBSE from 2026-27, is

The danger is not technology itself, but the quiet, unquestioned surrender to its conveniences. A few months ago, ChatGPT unveiled a new health feature that allows users to upload medical test reports for analysis, carefully stopping just short of formal clinical advice. On paper, it was a modest extension of an already ubiquitous tool. In practice, it signalled something larger: the quiet expansion of machines into domains once considered deeply human. Around the same time,

Understanding how different professions may respond to AI can help students, parents, educators, and policymakers make wiser choices for the future. AI generated image A quiet anxiety is spreading across classrooms, workplaces, and households across the world. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable in writing reports, analysing data, generating images, and even producing computer code, many people are beginning to ask a simple but unsettling question: Which j

Pune-based engineer’s innovation brings relief in the time of LPG shortage Mumbai: As urban households continually grapple with fluctuating LPG prices and supply constraints, a Pune-based engineer has developed a sustainable, home-grown solution. Priyadarshan Sahasrabuddhe, an IIT-Bombay alumnus, has invented 'Vaayu'—a compact, domestic biogas reactor that seamlessly converts everyday kitchen waste into clean cooking fuel. By bringing renewable energy generation directly in

From missed opportunities in the 1960s to today’s fab ambitions, India’s semiconductor quest hinges on aligning world-class chip design with homegrown manufacturing. In the context of the ‘Make in India’ initiative, our ambition of becoming an independent semiconductor‑manufacturing hub has become a national discourse. Having spent the last decade and a half in hands‑on micro-manufacturing, both in academic and industrial R&D with a few patents in the field, I know how crucia

AI generated image It appears to be a quiet reversal of everything we were trained to admire. In school and in professional life, we celebrated the student who produced the right answer, the executive who delivered solutions, the leader who spoke with authority… Questions were treated as stepping stones, corridors leading to the grand hall of conclusion. The answer was the destination. Yet in the age of Artificial Intelligence, particularly in this era of the ‘prompt,’ the hi

Artificial Intelligence is not merely a technology upgrade cycle but a once-in-a-generation test of managerial courage and operational discipline. In 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone, a senior executive at Western Union reportedly dismissed it as an “idiotic toy” with no commercial possibilities. The company famously declined to buy the patent. A few decades later, that ‘toy’ had rewired global commerce. Similarly, in the early 1900s, automobiles we