top of page

By:

Akhilesh Sinha

25 June 2025 at 2:53:54 pm

Code for the Many

India wants artificial intelligence to serve development rather than deepen divides Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with his Bhutanese counterpart Tshering Tobgay in New Delhi. New Delhi:  As the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026 enters its third day, India appears to be pressing a case that cuts against the grain of much global AI discourse. The summit has been framed by the Sanskrit maxim  sarvajan hitaya, sarvajan sukhaya  (for the welfare and happiness of all) and seeks to move the...

Code for the Many

India wants artificial intelligence to serve development rather than deepen divides Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with his Bhutanese counterpart Tshering Tobgay in New Delhi. New Delhi:  As the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026 enters its third day, India appears to be pressing a case that cuts against the grain of much global AI discourse. The summit has been framed by the Sanskrit maxim  sarvajan hitaya, sarvajan sukhaya  (for the welfare and happiness of all) and seeks to move the debate beyond safety alarms and corporate rivalry towards a more pointed question: who, exactly, should benefit from artificial intelligence. Building on its advocacy in 2023 for fairer digital and financial access for the Global South, India is now positioning itself as a steward of a more democratic, human-centric AI that is meant to narrow, rather than entrench, global and domestic inequalities. That ambition builds on India’s posture at earlier global forums. In 2023, New Delhi argued that digital public infrastructure and concessional financing should be treated as global public goods, particularly for poorer nations. Three years on, the argument has sharpened. If AI is to shape growth, productivity and governance in the coming decades, India insists that its benefits must not mirror the inequalities of the industrial and digital revolutions before it. This sets India apart from the dominant poles of AI power. The United States and China have raced ahead with proprietary models and compute-heavy ecosystems. India, lacking the same scale of capital or chips, has instead emphasised deployment by asking how AI can be applied cheaply, widely and with human oversight. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often argued, AI is a double-edged tool: transformative when governed well, corrosive when left to markets alone. Stark Contrast The contrast with earlier summits is deliberate. Britain’s 2023 meeting at Bletchley Park fixated on catastrophic risks and frontier safety. South Korea’s Seoul summit in 2024 focused on scientific cooperation to mitigate harm. France’s Paris meeting in 2025 tried to tether AI to sustainability and public interest. India’s turn is broader and more political. The question it poses is not merely how to restrain AI, but how to distribute it. At the heart of the summit is an effort to make AI legible to ordinary citizens. Demonstrations are expected on its use in schools, hospitals, farms and welfare schemes, with particular emphasis on small towns and rural areas. The aim is to narrow what Indian officials increasingly describe as an “AI divide” between those who can exploit algorithms and those who remain invisible to them. The economic case is straightforward. AI-driven tools can raise productivity by automating routine work, improve hiring by reducing bias, and conserve energy through smarter consumption. In education, adaptive learning systems promise to personalise instruction in overcrowded classrooms. In agriculture, predictive models can guide farmers on soil health, pests and weather, lifting incomes while improving food security. In healthcare, AI-assisted diagnostics, from cancer detection in scans to remote patient monitoring, could compensate for India’s chronic shortage of doctors, especially outside cities. One of the summit’s most politically charged themes is road safety. India records between four and five lakh road accidents a year. According to figures cited in Parliament by Nitin Gadkari, 2024 alone saw 1.77 lakh fatalities, a third of them on national highways that make up just 2% of the road network. Officials argue that AI - through speed monitoring, pre-collision alerts and predictive traffic management - could dramatically cut deaths and emissions alike. Panels on data-driven transport policy will test how far such optimism can be translated into enforcement. Critics note that India still struggles with patchy data quality, weak local capacity and uneven internet access. Grand visions, they warn, risk dissolving into pilot projects. Yet that is precisely why New Delhi is pressing its case internationally. By pooling models, datasets and best practices, especially among countries of the Global South, it hopes to reduce costs and avoid dependence on a handful of foreign platforms. If successful, the IndiaAI Impact Summit will mark a shift in the global AI conversation. From fear to function; from concentration to diffusion. India is betting that the future of artificial intelligence will not be decided solely in data centres and boardrooms, but in classrooms, clinics, fields and highways. Whether the world follows is another matter. But New Delhi has made clear where it wants the argument to go.

India working on logistics of Tahawwur Rana's extradition

  • PTI
  • Feb 14, 2025
  • 3 min read

Updated: Feb 18, 2025

Tahawwur Rana

Washington: India is working on the logistics of Tahawwur Rana's surrender and extradition from the US, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri has said, as President Donald Trump announced that his administration has given the go-ahead to extradite the 26/11 terror attack accused “to face justice".

“This is an issue on which the US authorities have taken very clear decisions. I think you've seen the President announce it himself from the White House podium" the decision of the US to extradite Rana, Misri said at a press conference here on Thursday.


During a joint press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House, US President Donald Trump announced that his administration has approved the extradition of "very evil" Tahawwur Rana, wanted by Indian law enforcement agencies for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, "to face justice in India”.


In response to a question by PTI on the timeframe by when Rana will be extradited to India, Misri said: "We are working on the logistics of his surrender and extradition to India. There are a few final steps to be completed. The two sides are in touch on this particular issue.”


The India-US joint statement issued during the Prime Minister's visit to the US notes that Modi and Trump reaffirmed that the global scourge of terrorism must be fought and terrorist safe havens eliminated from every corner of the world.

“They committed to strengthen cooperation against terrorist threats from groups, including Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Jaish-e Mohammad, and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba in order to prevent heinous acts like the attacks in Mumbai on 26/11 and the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan on August 26, 2021," the joint statement said.


“Recognising a shared desire to bring to justice those who would harm our citizens, the US announced that the extradition to India of Tahawwur Rana has been approved," it said.


The leaders further called on Pakistan to expeditiously bring to justice the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai, and Pathankot attacks and ensure that its territory is not used to carry out cross-border terrorist attacks.

"The leaders also pledged to work together to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems and to deny access to such weapons by terrorists and non-state actors,” the joint statement added.

Rana, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, is currently lodged at a metropolitan detention centre in Los Angeles. He is known to be associated with Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks.

Speaking at the joint press meet, Trump said "Today I am pleased to announce that my administration has approved the extradition of one of the plotters and very evil people of the world, and having to do with the horrific Mumbai terrorist attack, to face justice in India. So, he is going back to India to face justice."


The extradition of Rana was cleared by the US Supreme Court in January as it rejected his review petition in the case.


India last month said it was working with American authorities for the early extradition of Rana.


"The US Supreme Court on January 21 declined to hear a petition from the accused. We are now working with the US side on procedural issues for early extradition to India of the accused in the Mumbai terror attack," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said.


In November 2012, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman among the Pakistani group, was hanged to death in Yerawada Jail in Pune.

-PTI

Comments

bottom of page