Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw asserted India’s front rank status among AI pioneers during the high level “AI Power Play” panel at World Economic Forum 2026 in Davos, challenging IMF rankings while underscoring the relevance of Indian models to global challenges. Moderated by Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer alongside IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, Microsoft chairman Brad Smith, and Saudi Investment Minister Khalid Al Falih, the discourse dissected AI’s geopolitical flux, economic ripples, governance quandaries, and equitable diffusion. Mr. Vaishnaw positioned India as mastering all five AI strata infrastructure, energy, chips, models, applications with systematic prowess.
Rejecting fixation on colossal models, Mr. Vaishnaw emphasised return on investment through real world deployment, noting 95% of practical cases solvable via 20 50 billion parameter architectures at minimal cost for maximal yield. Stanford metrics, he cited, rank India third globally in AI penetration and second in talent, rebutting IMF assessments. Democratising access, public private partnerships have pooled 38,000 GPUs into a subsidised national computing grid affordable at one third global rates for students, researchers, and startups while a nationwide skilling drive targets one crore citizens to fortify IT and startup ecosystems.
Governance demands techno legal fusion, Mr. Vaishnaw argued, transcending statutes to deploy bias detection, courtroom admissible deepfake certification, and unlearning protocols. India’s indigenous safeguards address trust deficits proactively. Peers acknowledged this ascent: Mr. Bremmer hailed India’s decade long geopolitical and technological surge, as emerging economies draw cues from its scalable sovereignty. In the fifth industrial epoch, India’s low cost, high impact paradigm heralds inclusive augmentation, proving AI as equaliser rather than elitist enclave.
