The India AI Impact Summit 2026, being hosted in New Delhi this week under the aegis of the ministry of electronics and information technology, marks more than a diplomatic milestone. It represents a deliberate strategic recalibration. Anchored in the IndiaAI Mission, the summit signals New Delhi’s intent to shift the global AI conversation from abstract anxieties about safety and competitive advantage to the politics of impact — who benefits, who is excluded, and who sets the rules.
This is the first major Artificial Intelligence conclave hosted in the Global South. That symbolism matters. India is attempting to recast AI governance as a developmental question rather than merely a technological one. The framing — “AI for Humanity” — closely mirrors the long-standing argument of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that technology must serve public purpose, not just private capital.
India’s agenda rests on three normative pillars — People, Planet, and Progress — translated operationally into seven thematic chakras: democratising compute and data access; AI for social impact; safe and trustworthy AI; AI in manufacturing and supply chains; agriculture and food security; healthcare; and AI for the Global South. This architecture reflects a strategic choice to embed AI within the language of inclusion and sustainability.
The emphasis on ‘small AI’ — deployable, affordable, multilingual systems designed for low-connectivity environments — is significant. In doing so, India is challenging the implicit assumption that innovation must be synonymous with scale-intensive, compute-heavy frontier systems. Instead, it foregrounds use cases: predictive public health models, climate-resilient agriculture, digitised service delivery, building AI as a tool of State capacity rather than just corporate prowess.
With a huge talent pool of AI professionals and the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, New Delhi believes it possesses the demographic and the entrepreneurial heft to shape the debate. When figures such as Sam Altman speak of India as a potential “full-stack AI leader”, it reinforces a growing perception that the country could anchor a broader coalition of emerging economies.
The Summit’s outreach to institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations underscores its multilateral thrust. India is positioning itself as a bridge — between innovation hubs of the West and implementation imperatives of the South; between US-led entrepreneurial ecosystems and China’s scale-driven, State-centric AI model. This ‘third way’ in AI governance mirrors India’s broader foreign policy instinct: strategic autonomy without isolation. In an era of techno-nationalism, such positioning allows India to remain engaged with multiple power centers while amplifying voices from Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
Crucially, India’s international rhetoric aligns with domestic experimentation. National initiatives integrating AI into welfare architecture provide empirical grounding to its claims.
Yet ambition must contend with structural realities. India’s domestic compute capacity remains modest. Dependence on foreign semiconductor supply chains complicates assertions of technological sovereignty. Governance questions, ranging from algorithmic bias in a hyper-diverse society to the implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection framework, pose credibility tests. If India champions trustworthy AI globally, it must demonstrate regulatory coherence at home.
If successful, the AI Summit could recalibrate the geopolitics of AI. By shifting the conversation from zero-sum technological supremacy to distributive justice and sustainable deployment, India is attempting to democratise both access and agency. South-South collaboration, innovation challenges, and cross-border capacity-building could emerge as tangible outcomes — if declarations translate into delivery.
Harsh V. Pant is Vice-President for Studies and Foreign Policy, Observer Research Foundation
