AI Growth in India: Opportunity for Many, Uncertainty for Many

 The AI Summit in Delhi has been all over the news these past few days, and rightly so. It was India’s moment to show our skills, our scale, and our speed. Yes, there were some hiccups with infrastructure and crowd movement. Some of that was expected.

I have always felt this: remove physical infrastructure problems, and Indians do extremely well. Wherever roads, traffic, and basic systems get in the way, we struggle. But give us pure brain work, where clean air and smooth highways are not required, and we do wonders.

That said, I looked at headlines from Feb 5 to Feb 20. I gave a score of +5 to headlines about productivity gains, new jobs, and progress. I gave -5 to headlines about job losses, cyber attacks, and data leaks. Headlines that simply reported investments or applications got a 0. Then I used AI to create a heat map based on this scoring.

The result: over those 20 days, the net sentiment score on AI was +24. That is quite high, though not surprising. The AI Summit in Delhi dominated the news. There is a clear sense of excitement. A feeling of power. Even a bit of ego and aggression. All of that can be good energy.

Source : headlines in ET, BS, Mint, 28 headlines over 20 days. Score given is subjective. In general, headlines that speak of job losses ( most important worry worldwide) gets maximum negative score -5. Job creation due to AI gets max positive score +5. And so on. Output from Claude AI. 

But when I remove the AI Summit headlines, the score drops close to neutral. Under the surface, there is worry. India is concerned about job losses.

The numbers make it worse. TCS is down 12,000 people. Campus hiring is at an all-time low. Global names like Anthropic are saying most white-collar jobs could be handled by AI within 18 months. These are not comforting headlines. They are scary.

I have tracked more headlines over the months and will keep refining this model. I would be surprised if the strong +24 net score of February 2026 is repeated. 

AI in the Union Budget 2026–27: The Promise of VISTAAR for Indian Agriculture

In the Union Budget 2026–27, the finance minister placed considerable emphasis on the role of artificial intelligence in India. Among the initiatives mentioned was VISTAAR for agriculture (Virtually Integrated System To Access Agricultural Resources). In simple terms, the programme aims to use digital data and technology infrastructure to give farmers practical, usable information, while also improving coordination between the Centre, the states, and agricultural institutions such as the ICAR.

More notably, the finance minister announced the launch of Bharat VISTAAR. This initiative proposes the use of AI to transform how agricultural data is generated and used by farmers and institutions. It will bring together information on weather, soil conditions and other inputs, delivered in multiple Indian languages. The use of AI is expected to make this data more meaningful and actionable, while the multilingual approach could extend the reach of such technology and information to large sections of India’s farming community.