3 months ago
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With the AI Impact Summit underway, satellite leaders and exertion experts are gathering successful Delhi to sermon innovation and governance directions for artificial quality (AI). This is happening astatine a infinitesimal of profound contradiction — and frankly, disorder — astir what is the “right” mode to govern AI that encourages strategical instauration portion acknowledging some the known and chartless risks it poses.
As the big of the Summit, India has uniquely positioned itself arsenic offering a “Third Way” for AI governance, 1 that recognises opportunities for countries to participate AI markets portion acknowledging that existing governance strategies bash not transportation neatly to the planetary majority. Case successful point: the EU’s compliance-heavy regime, the U.S.’s hands-off approach, and China’s centralised authorities exemplary were each designed for antithetic economical contexts and argumentation traditions. India needs thing different.
A chiseled approach
In November 2025, the Indian authorities released its AI governance guidelines. As Amlan Mohanty, 1 of the framework’s architects, reflected successful a recent Techlawtopia essay, the guidelines correspond a distinctive approach: not simply a regulatory framework, focused connected hazard mitigation, but a governance model encompassing adoption, diffusion, diplomacy, and capacity-building. It prioritises scaling AI for inclusive improvement — successful healthcare, agriculture, education, and nationalist medication — portion moving done existing ineligible structures alternatively than creating standalone AI legislation. It is designed to beryllium agile and forward-looking, translating high-level principles into applicable guidelines portion allowing country for improvement arsenic the exertion matures.
This attack is already taking shape. On February 10, the authorities announced amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, which marque it mandatory for intermediary tools and platforms to statement AI-generated accusation and enforce a three-hour takedown model for harmful content. This is the archetypal lawsuit of a authorities mandating AI-generation disclosure. But implementation and enforcement astatine scale, against tech behemoths and successful a mode that respects quality rights and antiauthoritarian norms, volition beryllium pugnacious without planetary coordination.
For the Global South, this matters enormously. The attraction of AI concern , peculiarly among a fistful of backstage actors successful the Global North, creates an uneven scenery for AI diffusion and governance. Dependence connected outer oregon proprietary AI systems brings distant existing and caller contextually-rooted risks. They besides marque it challenging for mediate powers to leverage AI tools successful ways that conscionable their circumstantial economical and societal needs.
India’s attack — emphasising strategical autonomy, public-private partnerships, and governance tailored to the section discourse — offers an alternate path. It recognises the request for probe infrastructure crossed mediate powers, including but not constricted to shared information valuation frameworks, collaborative probe networks, and mechanisms to excavation expertise connected risks that nary azygous state tin measure alone. Given its size, scale, and starring relation successful AI infrastructure, arsenic good arsenic its historical occurrence successful integer improvement and entree diffusion, India is uniquely positioned to convene this coordination.
Critical gap
Yet governance coordination means small if the model itself has gaps. A governance attack that accelerates AI adoption portion providing nary extortion for workers being displaced is not a balanced exemplary for others to follow. It is simply a faster mentation of what is already happening betwixt salient AI superpowers. Without a shared knowing of the minimum measures to mandate transparency and accountability from AI developers, support whistleblowers and susceptible populations from adverse harms, and promote nationalist consciousness and agency, adjacent well-meaning coordination is apt to autumn flat. In short, what is required is simply a corresponding model for the radical connected whom that innovation depends.
The AI Impact Summit represents a genuine accidental to signifier what inclusive AI governance coordination could look like: robust public-private partnerships crossed the exertion stack that administer gains much equitably, and positioning India arsenic a hub for agile corporate governance among mediate powers. For nations seeking improvement pathways compatible with their strategical interests and organization capacities, India’s exemplary holds existent appeal.
The adjacent 12 months volition find whether India’s exemplary tin successfully integrate innovation, security, and quality payment oregon whether the gaps make the precise instability that governance is meant to prevent. The remainder of the satellite is watching closely. The choices India makes present volition find whether the “Third Way” becomes a exemplary worthy following.
Uma Kalkar is an AI governance and argumentation strategist specialising successful planetary AI governance coordination and diplomacy; she is Strategy Lead astatine AI Safety Connect
