Pradeep Reddy – Director of Engineering at Confluent India – sees India’s AI dream as bold. But without public participation, it might stay a dream.
The Government of India’s IndiaAI Mission is a defining moment in our nation’s digital journey — a ₹10,000+ crore commitment to making India a global hub for artificial intelligence innovation. From establishing compute capacity to building datasets and funding startups, the intent is crystal clear: India doesn’t just want to use AI — we want to lead the AI era.
But this leads us to a critical question — are Indians ready for IndiaAI?
Because missions don’t succeed in isolation. They thrive when every citizen — from a farmer in Punjab to a student in Pune — feels included, informed, and inspired.
This isn’t just about silicon and servers. It’s about people. And to make IndiaAI truly transformational, we need a strategy that not only builds for India, but also builds with India.
AI Awareness is Urban. AI Impact Should Be Universal
AI is often seen as a complex, elite technology — reserved for coders, scientists, or Big Tech. But in reality, AI already affects how we shop, pay, watch, access healthcare, secure loans, or navigate cities – every possible touchpoint of modern India.
Still, millions of Indians remain unaware of what real AI is, how it impacts them, and more importantly, how they can shape it. This disconnect between policy vision and people’s participation is what the IndiaAI Mission must address.
If we want AI to solve India’s grassroots problems — from crop failure to healthcare delivery — from smart education to smart city, then we must bring AI to the grassroots, not just to corporate boardrooms or innovation hubs. It must become a people’s movement — one where rural students, small-town traders, ASHA workers, farmers, teachers, and frontline educators are as engaged as the data scientists and tech entrepreneurs in Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Gurgaon or Hyderabad.
As an engineer, and someone deeply involved in AI, I believe there are seven key ways we can make AI accessible and participative for all – make PeopleAI Mission.
- AI Literacy in Every Indian Language
The first step to this transformation is language. The biggest barrier to AI adoption in India is not access to technology — it’s the lack of understanding. Most Indians encounter AI every day — when their phones autocomplete texts, recommend videos, or flag bank fraud — but few recognize it. If we want AI to become a mass movement, we must explain it in languages that every Indian speaks and understands. AI shouldn’t be taught with jargon. It should be told through stories, local analogies, WhatsApp explainers, and community radio. Because the first step to owning AI is understanding it — on your own terms, in your own tongue.
- Bring AI Closer to Home
But awareness alone won’t drive change. India needs physical spaces across its 750+ districts where people can experience and experiment with AI. District-level AI labs — built through public-private collaborations — can serve as learning hubs, demo zones, and pilot grounds for hyperlocal AI solutions. In Jharkhand, a lab could focus on mining safety using AI-based alert systems. In Assam, it might pilot flood prediction tools. This decentralization will ensure AI doesn’t trickle down — it rises up from the grassroots.
- Start Young, Teach Smart
Education is the next frontier. If AI is to become a common skill, it must enter the mainstream education system — not just as an elective in elite engineering colleges, but as a foundational concept in schools, vocational centers, and teacher training programs. This isn’t about turning every student into a data scientist. It’s about building critical thinkers who understand what AI is, how it works, what it can do, and what it should never do.
- Build Bharat’s AI Champions
A government-supported Rural AI Fellows program could accelerate this. By identifying young enthusiasts from small towns, cities and villages and training them as local AI ambassadors, India can create a grassroots network of AI champions. Think of them as IndiaAI’s grassroots task force — young, local, trusted, and mission-driven.
- Unlock Data for All
AI is hungry — not for money, but for data. And much of India’s most valuable data — on weather, health, agriculture, education — sits in silos, published as outdated sheets no one touches. We must build a real-time Open Data Exchange (ODE) where anonymized public datasets are streamed continuously and accessed by startups, researchers, and developers. UPI succeeded because it was open and interoperable. IndiaAI can succeed the same way — not by hoarding data, but by sharing it securely, fairly, and in real time.
- Let the People Build
An IndiaAI Citizen Portal or IndiaAI Jan Manch — a digital forum where people can suggest problems AI might solve, vote on proposals, or participate in local hackathons — can become a powerful engine for trust. When people feel heard and see their inputs reflected in decisions, they are more likely to adopt and support these systems. When people co-create, they co-own. And when they co-own, they become the loudest champions of change.
- Tell India’s AI Story
And finally, we must rethink how we tell AI stories. Mass media has projected AI either as a job killer or as a sci-fi fantasy. We need cultural narratives. TV shows, OTT platforms, radio shows, even cinema — these platforms can humanize AI by integrating it into stories people already trust. Let AI become a character in India’s development saga — not the villain, not the superhero, but the companion.
IndiaAI Must Be a People’s Mission — Not Just a Policy Mission
India has the scale, the problems, the creativity, and now, the policy momentum. But missions don’t succeed in documents — they succeed in the daily lives of people. For IndiaAI to deliver real transformation, we must ensure it reaches every district, every dialect, every mobile phone, and every young dreamer.
IndiaAI should not be remembered as a government project. It should be remembered as a people’s movement. Let’s not build AI just for the next unicorn. Let’s build it for the next billion.
Let AI be for India, by India, of India, and most importantly, for Indians.