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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.

The Fighter Jet as Foreign Policy

Canada’s fighter-jet dilemma exposes a deeper rupture in North American trust.

Canada’s fighter-jet procurement has become a proxy war for something far larger than defence modernisation. As reported by the CBC, Ottawa has quietly begun making payments for long-lead components for 14 additional F-35s, even as a formal review of the contract with Lockheed Martin grinds on. The contradiction is revealing. It suggests that Canada is trying to keep its options open in an alliance that no longer feels reliably allied.


Officially, nothing has changed. The Department of National Defence insists the review continues. Prime Minister Mark Carney has declined to specify how many jets Canada will ultimately buy. Legally, Ottawa is bound only to the first tranche of 16 aircraft, due to arrive from 2026. But money has a logic of its own. By paying now for components tied to a further 14 jets, Canada preserves its slot in a congested global production queue.


The F-35, known formally as the F-35 Lightning II, has long been a political millstone. It is the most expensive weapons programme in modern history, and Canada’s share has swollen by roughly C$8bn beyond original estimates. The planned fleet of 88 aircraft was meant to cost C$19bn; sustainment costs will dwarf that. What was sold as interoperability has come to look like dependency.


That dependence matters because Canada’s strategic environment has shifted abruptly ever since US President Donald Trump has revived trade warfare and rhetorical belligerence. Tariffs have duly been slapped on Canadian exports. Threats have been floated to decertify Canadian-made aircraft. Trump has made a bad joke about making Canada the 51st US State. His commerce secretary has mused aloud about withdrawing from treaties governing the Great Lakes, NORAD and even the Five Eyes.


For a country whose defence has been structured around intimate American integration, this is destabilising. NORAD, the bedrock of continental air defence, assumes that the Royal Canadian Air Force can field credible fighters of its own. If it cannot, then American aircraft will have to fill the gap, ironically increasing Washington’s costs while eroding Ottawa’s sovereignty. The F-35 was supposed to lock in that partnership for decades. Instead, it has exposed its fragility.


Hence the renewed interest in Sweden’s Saab and its Gripen fighter. Saab has signalled a willingness to expand production in Canada, potentially assembling aircraft not only for Ottawa but also for Ukraine, which has expressed interest in more than 100 Gripens. Such numbers would require a dramatic expansion of Saab’s manufacturing capacity, possibly on Canadian soil. For policymakers in Ottawa, this technology diversification, with its industrial offsets and a subtle rebuke to American arm-twisting is tempting.


The idea of a mixed fleet that would include some F-35s for high-end stealth missions and some Gripens for air policing is gaining currency. While it would certainly complicate logistics militarily, it would hedge risks politically. Unlike the F-35, the Gripen comes with fewer strings attached and greater latitude over software, upgrades and deployment.


Yet, Canada cannot simply walk away. Its aerospace sector, the world’s fifth-largest, is deeply embedded in the F-35’s global supply chain. Canadian firms produce components for hundreds of aircraft flown by allied air forces. A full withdrawal would endanger domestic jobs and invite retaliation.


The result is paralysis by partial commitment. Canada pays just enough to avoid losing its place, while signalling loudly that the relationship needs rebalancing. It is a risky dance. The longer uncertainty persists, the higher the costs - financially, diplomatically and strategically.


What is really under review is not a contract but an assumption that proximity guarantees partnership. For decades, the United States and Canada treated defence integration as an unshakeable fact of geography. Today, it has become a bargaining chip. Ottawa’s flirtation with the Gripen is less about Sweden than about sending a message to Washington as allies, like aircraft, cannot be taken for granted.

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