January 17, 2026 07:08 AM IST First published on: Jan 17, 2026 at 07:08 AM ISTAI will shape the 21st century much as steam power, railways, electricity and the telegraph shaped the 19th. Those technologies reordered global power, transformed economies, and elevated nations. Britain rode them to empire; the US built institutions around them to emerge as the dominant global power.AI is that kind of technology. And for India, the stakes are civilisational. With decisive action over the next decade, it can emerge as one of the world’s three major AI powers, alongside the US and China. Without it, the country risks compounding economic, geopolitical and social disadvantages.AdvertisementTake education. India’s jobs challenge is fundamentally a skills challenge. Its roots lie in uneven teaching quality, large class sizes, and the lack of individual attention in early schooling. AI systems are uniquely suited to addressing this. One-to-one tutoring at national scale, adaptive learning, continuous teacher feedback, and personalised curricula are no longer science fiction.India’s backlog of over 47 million cases, according to the National Judicial Data Grid, is not only a justice issue but an economic one. Weak contract enforcement raises the cost of capital and discourages enterprise. AI systems can be deployed to summarise filings, analyse precedents, and support judges with structured recommendations. Decisions would remain human. But timelines could compress from years to months. Few reforms would have a comparable impact on India’s investment climate.China enjoys a substantial lead in AI compute, military integration and software depth. As warfare becomes autonomous, geography alone will not guarantee security. A nation without indigenous AI capability will face growing vulnerabilities.AdvertisementAI-driven automation is likely to disrupt white-collar work globally over the next decade. Productivity gains will accrue disproportionately to firms that own the technology, most of which are foreign. India’s outsourcing industry faces structural disruption. Overseas professional pathways may narrow. Without domestic AI capability, India risks absorbing the disruption while exporting the value.Ironically, India already plays a major role in the global AI ecosystem without capturing its upside. Indian users constitute one of the largest populations engaging with global AI platforms, contributing substantial interaction data and usage value. That phase of heavily subsidised access will not last. As dependency grows, pricing power will consolidate in a handful of firms abroad.The choice is not whether India adopts AI, but whether it does so as a sovereign shaper or a dependent user. What would a serious national response look like?First, a national AI programme with clear authority, measurable outcomes, and direct reporting to the PM. It should bring together the best minds from the public and private sectors. Call it Mission Saraswati, a mission to place knowledge, intelligence and learning at the heart of India’s state capacity.Second, strategic public investment is unavoidable. Even with the demand unleashed by the government’s embrace of AI, private enterprise alone will not build sovereign AI infrastructure within the timelines India requires. A five-year, $100 billion sovereign investment programme — roughly 0.5 per cent of GDP annually — could catalyse several times that amount in private capital. At the same time, India should actively focus on attracting global capital by emphasising the growth unlocked through AI-enabled governance and ease of doing business, combined with its large, young population. This approach — blending state capacity with respect for capital and private execution — can be understood as Lakshmi Pujan: Not ritual symbolism, but disciplined national capital mobilisation and deployment.most readThird, this is not only a technological shift. It is a cultural one. India must consciously move from jugaad to systems, from patchwork to precision. Infrastructure alone will not suffice if standards, institutions and execution remain weak.None of this diminishes the need for serious safeguards around privacy, bias, accountability and democratic oversight. AI governance must evolve alongside AI deployment. But caution cannot become paralysis. Nations that hesitate will not shape the rules; they will inherit them.India is led by a Prime Minister who has demonstrated an unusual willingness to pursue long-term structural reform. If this political will is channelled toward a national AI mission, India will enjoy a rare alignment of technological opportunity and leadership capacity. This is India’s railway moment. Seize it.The writer is MD and CEO, Lodha Group