India’s AI Leap and the Politics of Disruption

As India unveiled its ambition to become an artificial-intelligence superpower, an unsettling sequence of protests and riots marred the summit.

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 last week brought together global technology chiefs, investors, policymakers and heads of state from some 20 countries. At New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, gleaming halls hosted what the government billed as the largest artificial-intelligence gathering the world has yet seen.

But disturbingly, outside the halls, the country seemed seized by a very different energy in form of topless protests by members of an irresponsible Opposition, communal skirmishes, terror alerts and social-media frenzy. While India was announcing its arrival in the AI big league, it seemed simultaneously to advertise its vulnerability to disorder. Whether this was coincidence or something more deliberate has quickly become a matter of political argument. But even without indulging conspiracies, the contrast reveals something important about India’s moment. As it inches closer to the technological frontier, the costs of instability - real or manufactured - are rising.

Watershed Moment

The summit itself was carefully choreographed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, inaugurating the main sessions on February 19, framed artificial intelligence not as a Silicon Valley toy but as a development tool. India, he argued, could fuse scale, data and democratic legitimacy in a way neither China nor the West quite manages.

More than 840 exhibitors, over 500 parallel events, delegates from 88 countries and a parade of corporate announcements that, taken together, resembled an investment avalanche. Reliance Industries promised Rs. 10 lakh crore (about $110bn) for AI infrastructure, data centres and networks. Adani Group pledged $100bn by 2035 for data centres and AI-ready infrastructure. Google unveiled plans for a $15 billion full-stack AI hub, while Microsoft spoke of investments of up to $50 billion across AI, cloud and skilling, with India as a launchpad for the global south.

There were partnerships too. OpenAI tied up with the Tata Group on AI compute infrastructure starting at 100 megawatts and scaling to a gigawatt. Anthropic and Infosys announced centres of excellence. Blackstone revealed a $600m bet on Neysa, an Indian AI start-up. Domestic players showcased indigenous models such as Sarvam AI, signalling that India wants not merely to host foreign platforms but to build its own.

Yet, for all the chest-thumping, India remains a challenger rather than a leader. It ranks around tenth among AI nations, well behind America and China. In global AI investment it is third, trailing the United States (with roughly 56 percent of global investment) and China (17 percent), but ahead of most of Europe. The harder constraint lies in high-performance computing. America accounts for about 35 percent of the world’s top systems and nearly half of total computing capacity; China has fewer systems but remains formidable. India’s share is just around one percent, but rising.

India’s recent accession to the US-led Pact for Integrity and Transparency in Semiconductors (dubbed the ‘Pax Silica’ alliance) was announced at the summit, in the presence of Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and America’s ambassador. The pact aims to secure supply chains for chips, AI and critical minerals across the Indo-Pacific. With India on board, the group now numbers ten countries. Beijing, already wary of India’s data scale and talent pool, is unlikely to be comforted.

Countries that threaten to rearrange technological hierarchies tend to acquire not just admirers but spoilers.

Disconcerting Protest

The most visually arresting disruption came on the summit’s opening day. Eight to ten workers of the Indian Youth Congress, having apparently gained entry through QR-code registration, shed their shirts inside the venue and shouted slogans against Mr Modi. They claimed to be protesting farm policies and an India–US trade deal; the Youth Congress president described the stunt as ‘Gandhian’ and ‘Bhagat Singh-style.’

The ruling BJP accused the opposition of shaming India before the world. What made the episode more damaging was not its nudity but its choreography. Pre-registration and coordinated action inside a tightly secured venue suggested planning rather than impulse. Even sceptics conceded that it landed as an image problem at precisely the wrong moment.

The same week saw communal flare-ups in three places: Sihora in Madhya Pradesh, Amberpet in Hyderabad and Bagalkot in Karnataka. In Sihora, alleged vandalism at a Durga temple during simultaneous aarti and nearby namaz triggered stone-pelting.

In Hyderabad, a Shivaji Jayanti procession intersected awkwardly with Ramadan prayers; tensions escalated, and a YouTuber was attacked. In Bagalkot, stones were thrown at another Shivaji procession. While the police swiftly restored order, the timing was unsettling as all three incidents clustered around February 19, precisely during the summit’s centrepiece.

India has no shortage of religious processions or flashpoints. Yet investors and diplomats notice patterns, not explanations.

More unsettling were intelligence alerts warning of possible terror attacks on Delhi temples during the summit. For many, this revived memories of February 2020, when riots had erupted in north-east Delhi during the visit of American president Donald Trump (serving his first term), that left over 50 dead. Several accused like Tahir Hussain, Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam were later arrested under anti-terror laws; cases remain before the courts. At the time, allegations of foreign links had surfaced, though proof remains elusive.

The recurrence of alerts at moments of diplomatic or symbolic importance has encouraged darker readings.

Foreign Shadows

Fuel has been added by the rhetoric of external actors and the statements of domestic opposition figures. The Hungarian-American financier George Soros, long cast as a villain in nationalist narratives, has spoken openly of funding efforts to defend democracy worldwide, including in India - remarks his critics interpret as hostility to the Modi government. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, during recent foreign visits, has praised China’s manufacturing prowess and warned that India’s neglect of production risks unemployment and social fracture.

Set against India’s push to present itself as a stable, trustworthy AI partner for the global south, such comments grate.

There is a precedent here. During the pandemic, India’s production of Covaxin and Covishield, and its willingness to supply vaccines to over 100 countries, won praise but also resentment from established pharmaceutical powers and competitors. A similar dynamic may be emerging in AI. The summit’s emphasis on open, inclusive models; on training programmes across 500 universities; and on building hundreds of indigenous models positions India as a potential norm-setter for the global south. That threatens existing centres of data power.

None of this requires a grand conspiracy. Progress itself creates losers. Political opposition seeks visibility. Foreign rivals probe for weakness. Fringe groups exploit moments of attention.

The danger for India lies less in sabotage than in self-distraction. If every disruption is framed as an existential plot, the country risks confusing noise for signal. Its AI ambitions will be tested not by protestors but by electricity grids, chip supply, research depth and regulatory clarity. Closing the high-performance computing gap with China will take years of disciplined investment, not weeks of outrage.

Yet complacency would be equally foolish. As $250bn of promised capital waits to be deployed, and as India edges closer to strategic technologies, the premium on internal stability will rise. Investors are patient about politics, but not about unpredictability.

Whether the disturbances were coincidence or calculation may never be proved. What is clear is that success now carries a new responsibility.

To lead in artificial intelligence, India must master not only algorithms and data centres, but also the harder task of governing attention, dissent and disorder. For in the age of AI, power lies as much in perception as in code.