Major opportunities for AI in jobs and governance, claims MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan

Ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, the Secretary for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in a wide-ranging conversation at The Hindu MIND event moderated by Aroon Deep discussed artificial intelligence (AI), India’s semiconductor ambitions, and MeitY’s role in digital governance. We are less than a week away from the India AI Impact Summit, which will witness participation of representatives from dozens of countries. Could you give us a quick rundown on where we are on AI from an Indian perspective? We’ve taken an approach where we will try to provide the three aspects of infrastructure that AI needs: compute, datasets, and models. With government support, access to these is made a little easier. Then the focus is on seeing what we can do with the applications and solutions that people are able to develop using these resources. Ultimately, there are two things that are important. One, that firms’ revenues will depend on how they deploy AI. Deployment is important and that’s what also delivers impact. In the Indian context, there are many areas where you can use AI to enhance productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Our start-ups can do well and these are things that we can offer also as products to the rest of the world. We necessarily have to do it a little frugally given the kind of resources we have, which is again a reason why this model that we have adopted appeals to many countries in the poorer parts [of the world]. In a number of indicators relating to AI, which institutions like Stanford University and others measure, we seem to be doing relatively well. On the Vibrancy Index, we ranked third, on skill penetration and use of AI for enterprise solutions, we ranked second overall. So, if you look at this kind of penetration and the kind of skilling, clearly we seem to have some advantage there that we need to build on. NITI Aayog has done a study that shows that yes, undoubtedly we lose, or some jobs in the regular coding programming side of IT/ITeS (Information Technology-enabled Services) will go away, but we can create many more jobs in terms of what else can happen. What I see really as the big other opportunity is that there are many areas, including governance, where all of us would like to see substantial enhancement in quality and that probably is something that AI can offer. At the same time, we are aware of risks, dangers, and possible harms, which is why I think that when there is a need to regulate, we stand ready to regulate. If you have seen the report chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser on AI Governance Guidelines, what it also states is try and use existing laws as much as possible. If you take, for example, what we can do with the existing Information Technology Act, that’s one aspect of it. The other part is what we need to do in the copyright space. So, that is being dealt with in a particular way. Another part is how other data, including personal data, g