Modi's AI Spectacle: Chaos and Deception in New Delhi
The India AI Impact Summit 2026, held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, has been marred by chaos, confusion and deception. The events on the ground have produced unintended media headlines for India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi who wants to be seen as the "vishwaguru" (teacher of the world) in the field of artificial intelligence as well. First, there was massive chaos on the opening day, with long lines and sudden unannounced evacuation of exhibitors and attendees from the show floor for several hours. This, the Indian government said, was done for "VIP" security, a euphemism for Mr. Modi's "photo op" as he walked the venue halls alone for the benefit of the cameras for self-promotion. Mr. Modi then declared that "India is not just a part of the AI revolution, but is leading and shaping it". To support such claims, an Indian University presented a "robodog" bought from China as its "innovation", a blatant lie that was immediately caught by people on the social media, leading to the expulsion of the institution from the show.
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| 5-Layer AI Stack |
Let's examine Mr. Modi's claim to be "leading and shaping" the AI revolution. The artificial intelligence technology is a 5-layer stack, consisting of energy, AI chips, infrastructure, AI models and applications. Only two nations, the United States and China, have their own full 5-layer stacks. It's hard to see India as leading in any one of these layers.
Currently, the AI space is dominated by China, the US and a handful of hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. Any country wanting to jump on the AI bandwagon has to choose between the American and Chinese giants. Bloomberg put it best as follows:
"This, fundamentally, is a matter of sovereignty: Whether a nation’s AI systems can be independent of foreign authority. That danger was showcased in 2024, when members of Australia’s UniSuper pension fund had access to their accounts cut off due to a Google cloud misconfiguration. In October, Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud services — the world’s largest — also suffered a major shutdown, damaging its reputation".
Strict security restrictions at the Indian AI summit caused significant limitations on carrying personal items, including laptops and other electronic devices. In spite of such "strict security", some participants reported their exhibits and personal items stolen at the event. The fact that only cash was accepted for food and other services at the venue for the AI Summit makes a mockery of the Modi government's hype about India's digital public infrastructure (DPI).
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| India's Galgotias University of Uttar Pradesh Showed Chinese Robodog as its Own |
There is a significant presence of Americans at the AI Summit in New Delhi. Major "hyperscalers" like Anthropic, Google and OpenAI and Microsoft executives are all attending. The American agenda at the conference was put very succinctly by Sriram Krishnan, Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, who said, "...We want to make sure that the world uses the American AI stack...We also want the world to use our AI model...We want all our allies, including India, to leverage our AI infrastructure."
Major US technology firms have announced plans to build large multi-gigawatt AI data centers in India that make enormous demands on energy and water for powering and cooling the energy-hungry beasts. They are facing strong resistance in US cities and towns because of concerns that they will divert precious water and power, increase the rates they have to pay and cause pollution. India appears to be welcoming them for the investment they bring, in spite of significant health and safety concerns. But the Americans will not guarantee "data sovereignty" to the Indian government for Indian consumers' data stored in these data centers.
President Donald Trump has recently scrapped greenhouse gas emission regulations to enable the use of fossil fuels to power AI data centers in the United States. But the local opposition by cities and towns continues to gather steam.
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Comments
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-19/india-can-t-spectacle-its-way-to-ai-power?embedded-checkout=true
Giant posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and feel-good slogans about artificial intelligence lined New Delhi’s roundabouts for the AI Impact Summit.
The summit was marked by dysfunction, including road closures, long lines, and unexpected venue closures, but also revealed India's appetite for AI and its potential as a market.
India's AI adoption figures are high, but the country faces challenges in moving from being a consumer to a producer of AI, including finding land, water, and electricity for data centers and addressing environmental concerns.
The spectacle of this week also obscures a more immediate, unique risk. Throughout the developed world, policymakers sell AI as a solution to aging populations and labor shortages. India has the opposite problem: a huge, young, increasingly educated workforce that needs jobs. The recent “AI scare” selloff has hit Indian IT especially hard, a reminder of how exposed its software sector is. If AI becomes a substitute for entry-level work before India can generate new opportunities, the social impact could be sharper than in the countries exporting the technology. The challenge of translating the AI wave into livelihoods is a bigger governing test for Modi than collecting selfies with Silicon Valley’s elite.
Still, the enthusiasm at the summit wasn’t manufactured. I spoke to a couple of college students who came to check it out on Monday. They didn’t mind the crowds or disruptions, saying the chaos simply proved how much people cared. They insisted that Indians aren’t merely using AI, they’re experimenting and building. The optimism was contagious, and it hinted at the nation’s genuine advantage: a massive, ambitious, mobile-first talent pool willing to try new tools fast.
But optimism doesn’t substitute for an ecosystem. A harder question hanging over this gathering is why India, with undeniably deep tech talent, has never had a “DeepSeek moment,” and still lacks a defining foundational research breakthrough. Adoption can scale quickly, but it’s much more difficult to build frontier capability without sustained investment in research, access to compute, and the kind of capital that lets entrepreneurs take bold bets. If the summit was meant to showcase India as an AI builder, the disarray also exposed why so many of its best and brightest are seeking opportunities elsewhere.
AI’s promises and hypocrisies were on open display in Delhi. Under a banner of “democratizing AI,” hotel rooms went for as much as $33,000 a night while homeless people were forcibly moved along the road to the venue. India is a test case for whether AI diffusion empowers everyday people or widens inequality. The rest of the world will be watching closely.
Walking between meetings in downtown New Delhi, I stopped counting the number of Modi posters after I hit 20. India can host the world. It can sell its vision of the future. But it can’t spectacle its way into AI power. That takes the unglamorous work of dedicated research funding, trustworthy institutions, reliable infrastructure — and a plan for the people expected to live with the consequences of this tech revolution.
@sandeep_PT
Bro, we all support you, and speak highly of you and Sarvam now, but refrain from making claims that don't stand technical scrutiny. Sarvam is no DeepSeek. There has been no new foundational algorithmic breakthrough, no training on fully indigenous chips, and no step-change in the economics of frontier-scale training. DeepSeek’s low-cost result came from concrete (new) technical advances, novel model architecture choices, deep bare-metal optimization of their hardware stack, and access to massive, diverse global data at scale. Let's not confuse running a smaller regional cluster with executing a global paradigm shift.
We wish you the best.
#Sarvam #DeepSeek #AI
https://x.com/sandeep_PT/status/2025097332208091309?s=20
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Sabeer Bhatia
@sabeer
The Galgotia fiasco is the inevitable end result of what I said about education a while back. When institutions prioritize optics, money, and rote memorization over real learning and critical thinking, failure isn’t an accident - it’s the outcome. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/hotmail-cofounder-sabeer-bhatia-blasts-indian-education-system-we-are-producing-an-army-of-useless-kids/articleshow/120916691.cms?from=mdr
https://x.com/sabeer/status/2024879694701797589?s=20
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Dr Nimo Yadav 2.0
@DrNimoYadav
Galgotias University is the only university in the world that published a research paper claiming that coronavirus gets killed by banging thalis and bells.
And Modi awarded this as Top Private university of India.
God save this country 🙏🏾
https://x.com/DrNimoYadav/status/2024696987820708102?s=20
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Prateek Goyal
@tweets_prateekg
Fun facts:
In just 7 yrs,#Galgotias Universty says it has filed 2,430 patents.
Meanwhile,IIT-Madras,one of India’s most respected public research institutions has filed about 2,550 patents in the 50 yrs since its inception in 1975.
someone needs to patent the word "patent". 1/n
https://x.com/tweets_prateekg/status/2024755147126255854?s=20
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Mint
@livemint
Galgotias University was allotted more space than four IITs' total during the AI Impact Summit 2026. This sparked controversy over the space allocation process, questioning the criteria used to determine exhibitor space at the event aimed at showcasing India's tech advancements.
https://livemint.com/news/india/ai-summit-galgotias-universitys-booth-was-bigger-than-that-of-four-iits-how-much-did-the-scandal-hit-varsity-pay-11771638444321.html
https://x.com/livemint/status/2025053947745153137?s=20
@opinion
Nowhere were the promises and hypocrisies of AI clearer than in India this week.
@cathythorbecke
explains from New Delhi 🎥
https://x.com/opinion/status/2024918460430455010?s=20
Read more at:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/hotmail-cofounder-sabeer-bhatia-blasts-indian-education-system-we-are-producing-an-army-of-useless-kids/articleshow/120916691.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Synopsis
Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia criticizes India's education system for prioritizing obedience over critical thinking, leading to a workforce of unoriginal individuals. He contrasts this with Western education, which encourages independent thought. Bhatia argues that the Indian system stifles creativity by emphasizing rote memorization and discouraging failure, hindering innovation and producing compliant workers instead of visionary creators.
In a nation obsessed with ranks, marks, and job titles, we’ve forgotten to ask the most basic question: Are our kids actually learning? For Sabeer Bhatia, the man who co-founded Hotmail, the answer is a resounding no. In a hard-hitting interview on the NNP podcast, Bhatia doesn’t mince words, calling out India’s education and work culture for building an “army of useless kids” instead of original thinkers.
At the heart of the problem is a deeply flawed system that rewards obedience over curiosity. “We live in a conformist society—people are often told, ‘Listen to others, do what they say.’ But why follow a path that’s already been walked?” Bhatia questions. Whether it's memorising textbooks or chasing the same startup ideas in saturated sectors, he believes the country is wired to produce workers who take orders, not visionaries who disrupt systems.
Bhatia draws a stark contrast between Indian and Western education. His young children in the US write their own stories and ideas, even if full of spelling mistakes. “Teachers don’t correct those because spelling is irrelevant. What matters is the thought.” In India, however, children are punished for errors instead of being encouraged to think independently. They’re taught not to learn, but to score.
It’s a mindset that starts early and ends up defining careers. Many bright students become engineers or doctors, not because of passion, but because society deemed it safe or respectable. “You can’t suppress the arts, sports, and culture and expect to build a balanced society,” he adds.
And even when Indian youth show entrepreneurial ambition, Bhatia says they’re crippled by the system itself: “You’re never asked to write a paper. You’re asked to memorise 13 chapters and regurgitate them. That is not education.
For innovation to thrive, he insists we need critical thinkers—people who do things, build things, experiment and fail. But the stigma around failure in India is so strong, even someone like Bhatia has been asked, “What have you done since Hotmail?” As if one stumble erases all worth. He believes that until India stops confusing compliance with intelligence, the country will keep losing potential to a system designed for factory workers, not creators.
While no country can fully decouple from US or Chinese models anytime soon, alternatives are emerging.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-02-21/india-has-a-unique-recipe-for-ai-sovereignty-new-economy
Everyone at the AI summit, whether from India, elsewhere in Asia, Europe, Africa or Latin America, likely understood one inescapable fact: They’re all at the mercy of two countries — the US and China — and a small handful of companies that control AI technology.
This, fundamentally, is a matter of sovereignty: Whether a nation’s AI systems can be independent of foreign authority. That danger was showcased in 2024, when members of Australia’s UniSuper pension fund had access to their accounts cut off due to a Google cloud misconfiguration. In October, Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud services — the world’s largest — also suffered a major shutdown, damaging its reputation.
While such incidents were declared accidents, they opened eyes to the possibility the next one might not be.
“We know ‘open’ can become ‘closed’ at any point in time — the moment a CEO decides,” Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s minister for electronics and information technology, said at a Bloomberg New Economy breakfast on the summit’s sidelines.
That could happen for any number of reasons — a change in corporate strategy, a commercial dispute or a government order.
Even Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire Indian industrialist who ranks as Asia’s richest man and is plowing money into AI, framed the implications of this new dynamic in binary terms.
“Will AI concentrate power in the hands of a few, or will it democratize opportunity for all?” Ambani asked in his Feb. 19 plenary address at the summit.
While no country can fully decouple from US or Chinese AI models anytime soon, alternatives to total dependency are emerging. One recipe came from Rishi Sunak, who as UK prime minister hosted the first AI summit in 2023. He’s now a senior adviser to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
First, a nation could create its own leverage, like the Netherlands with ASML Holding NV, whose equipment no advanced chipmaking operation can do without. As Sunak put it, “Where can we occupy a very strong, ideally monopolistic position in that supply chain?”
Next, diversification. “Avoid vendor lock-in, have a mix of providers, make sure you’re building capabilities that will allow you to switch things in and out,” Sunak said. Add in partnerships — even in a world of geopolitical volatility, there’s room for allies to share knowledge and intelligence that enhance mutual AI sovereignty.
“If you do all three of those things, you can build a strategy that gives your country resilience but also the opportunity to take advantage of this incredible thing that’s in front of us,” Sunak said.
India, meantime, has a vision for AI that’s distinctly Global South. “Welfare for All, Happiness of All,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaims on one of the many billboards in New Delhi commemorating the summit. “Showcasing the Power of AI for Global Good,” reads another.
The country, Vaishnaw explained, has its own multipronged plan to achieve AI sovereignty:
Support the local development of so-called small language models based on parameters critical to the Indian market.
Build a “common compute facility” so students, entrepreneurs and startups have affordable access to AI.
Design and ultimately manufacture its own semiconductors.
Use the AI summit to attract venture capital for Indian startups as well as funding for computing infrastructure such as data centers.
Before the summit began, Vaishnaw said India had obtained commitments for about $5 billion of venture capital investments and $140 billion for AI infrastructure. Days later, that had increased to at least $17 billion and $270 billion, respectively. “Not bad,” he mused.
And enough to bring India one step closer to realizing its grand ambitions.
@JhaSanjay
HOW WE MAKE A FOOL OF OURSELVES WITH PR : #AISummit
America is USD 30 trillion economy. China is at $20 trillion. We are officially not even $ 4 trillion yet. The gap is likely to widen even further.
America and China have social security architecture and higher standard of living for the average citizen .
Under Modi, our income inequality has worsened. 800 million live off free food grains. We are the lowest among G-20 countries in per capita income. On education, health, life expectancy, corruption, deaths on the road, environment, every conceivable parameter, we are awful. Our best are leaving the country, and many who are here, are suffering and jobless.
AQI related 2 million deaths happen every year. Zero action.
This sudden AI hype makes little sense. Sure, do what you should, but take a pause: Why is India becoming a public relations platform for the most failed leader in our political history???
https://x.com/JhaSanjay/status/2025428142920507532?s=20
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vir sanghvi
@virsanghvi
After the AI Summit when citizens were treated like dirt because of the VIP culture this is The Economist’s take. It’s the right point: ordinary people should not be victims of VIP worship
India’s VIP culture is out of control (from
@TheEconomist
)
https://x.com/virsanghvi/status/2025549576225300694?s=20
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The Economist
@TheEconomist
The country’s leaders claim to be servants but act like masters
https://x.com/TheEconomist/status/2025522218290049399?s=20
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Sagarika Ghose
@sagarikaghose
Indian students lack critical thinking because of the pressure of rote learning. ‘Docile engineers’ may find it difficult to think critically or hold power to account: says the profound Martha Nussbaum
https://x.com/sagarikaghose/status/2025441216603848865?s=20
By Krishan Kaushik
https://www.ft.com/content/5c26f2f6-c857-407c-93fe-7f59aa88c8f4
India’s ambition to widen access to AI and play a crucial role in the fast-developing technology fell short this week, as the country continues to struggle to find its place in an industry dominated by the US and China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government used the country’s hosting of this year’s Global AI Summit to push top AI groups, including OpenAI and Google, to open source models for specific social ends, such as healthcare, education and agriculture.
“Some countries and companies believe that AI is a strategic asset and should therefore be developed confidentially,” Modi said in his address. He added that the technology would “only benefit the world when it is shared.” The call comes as India has struggled to become a significant player in the AI arms race. Despite its huge tech talent pool and being home to global IT groups such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, it is not a leader in developing large language models or creating products from the technology’s rollout.
The world’s most populous country wants to make sure that AI decision-making is not restricted to the US and China, as countries of the global south recognise the technology’s transformative power and seek faster adoption. But India’s push to widen access and introduce a framework for global AI governance was largely dismissed by Washington and the country’s leading tech companies.
Michael Kratsios, White House chief of science and technology policy, on Friday told attendees that the US government “totally” rejected global governance of AI. “We believe AI adoption cannot lead to a brighter future if it is subject to bureaucracies and centralised control,” he added. Instead India managed to secure a voluntary commitment for AI companies to share their data on how the technology is being used and the effectiveness of multilingual models. The Global AI summit was also a roadshow for India, as it tries to minimise AI’s threat for its largest white-collar employer, the $300bn IT services sector. The event saw it secure investment pledges worth $227bn, most of it involving the build-out of data centres.
But the summit was marred by dysfunction, with gridlocked streets and attendees waiting in long queues to enter the venue. It was also hit by several high-profile speakers pulling out, including Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Despite big data centre projects being announced, experts warned that India did not yet have the large-scale computing infrastructure needed to become a big player in AI. Alphabet’s senior vice-president James Manyika told the FT that the wider access India wants was limited because of the lack of infrastructure, especially in the global south. “The world has not got enough capacity . . . I think the scale of the capacity of the investments, I think, is something that is going to have to happen everywhere. It’s particularly acute in the global south, so I think there’s work . . . to do.” The fractured geopolitical environment also worked against India’s push for a strong regulatory framework, according to AI experts.
J Trevor Hughes, chief executive of Boston-based not-for-profit IAPP, said the summit was conducted at an “odd moment” because “geopolitics is changing around the world”. “There is a broad deregulatory mood in the air. So the idea of imposing AI regulation creates an allergic reaction right now in many, and yet, risk management in AI is still a critical thing,” he added. A person who was part of the discussions between India and some of the US tech giants noted that as there was no pressure from the US government for global AI regulation, saying American companies are “feeling absolutely no need to even agree to a baseline”.
By Krishan Kaushik
https://www.ft.com/content/5c26f2f6-c857-407c-93fe-7f59aa88c8f4
The summit showed there were signs that India was making some headway in AI. Sarvam AI, one of India’s leading AI start-ups, used the summit to launch its new LLM. The Bengaluru-based group’s model is focused on solving day-to-day concerns, rather than harder problems such as advanced math and complex philosophical questions.
Meanwhile, India’s IT services sector has belatedly decided to embrace the technology. TCS and Infosys both announced partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, respectively, to help their clients adopt and integrate the technology. The importance of the Indian market to the leading AI groups was also made clear. OpenAI’s Sam Altman said the country was the company’s fastest-growing market for Codex, its coding agent that works alongside developers to build software. But one of the most talked-about moments at the summit came on Thursday, when a group photo of industry and government leaders neatly showed the friction at the heart of the AI industry. While everyone in the line followed Modi’s encouragement to clasp their neighbours’ hand in celebration above their heads, two of the industry’s fiercest rivals, Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, who were standing next to each other, could not bring themselves to do so.
My favorite part of the @Citrini7 piece
India is going to be absolutely decimated due to their entire economy being reliant on providing cheap white-collar workers to the West.
Probably spot on, actually.
https://x.com/geiger_capital/status/2025736550810616086?s=61&t=mgTxrmITUbpo9NntN5677Q
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THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future
CITRINI AND ALAP SHAH
https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic?source=queue
“(In 2026) India was the inverse. The country’s IT services sector exported over $200 billion annually, the single largest contributor to India’s current account surplus and the offset that financed its persistent goods trade deficit. The entire model was built on one value proposition: Indian developers cost a fraction of their American counterparts. But the marginal cost of an AI coding agent had collapsed to, essentially, the cost of electricity. TCS, Infosys and Wipro saw contract cancellations accelerate through 2027. The rupee fell 18% against the dollar in four months as the services surplus that had anchored India’s external accounts evaporated. By Q1 2028, the IMF had begun “preliminary discussions” with New Delhi.
The engine that caused the disruption got better every quarter, which meant the disruption accelerated every quarter. There was no natural floor to the labor market”
While AI is causing a major structural shift, experts and industry leaders generally agree it will not "kill" India’s IT industry but rather force a deep reinvention. However, the transition is expected to be painful, particularly for entry-level roles and legacy business models.
Key Impacts on the Industry
Market Sell-off and Valuation Reset: In early 2026, the Nifty IT index saw a significant correction—dropping roughly 14% in February alone—following the launch of advanced AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cowork. This reflected investor fears that AI could bypass traditional application maintenance and testing, which account for about one-third of industry revenues.
Job Displacement vs. Creation:
The Risk: Automation is targeting repetitive, junior-level tasks like basic coding, testing, and debugging. Some analysts predict that 9–12% of IT services revenue could be eliminated over the next 3–4 years as legacy software and testing become redundant.
The Opportunity: Industry giants like Wipro and Infosys view AI as a massive opportunity to move toward "autonomous enterprises". While AI could disrupt 92 million jobs globally, it is estimated it could create 170 million new roles in areas like model training, data curation, and AI governance.
Structural Shift in Business Models: The industry is moving away from "headcount-based" billing (selling hours) to outcome-based billing. Nasscom suggests that Indian tech firms are reinventing themselves as "essential orchestrators" for large-scale AI deployment.
Reddit
Reddit
+10
Opposing Views
Perspective Core Argument
The "Pessimists" Veteran VC Vinod Khosla predicts the sector could "die out" within five years as AI automates most programming and quality engineering.
The "Optimists" JPMorgan Chase & Co. describes "extinction" fears as overly simplistic, noting that AI will likely become another tool to address more work within the same budgets, similar to the cloud computing shift.
Current Status: Major firms like TCS have already begun workforce reductions (over 12,000 roles) while simultaneously investing heavily in AI upskilling to stay relevant.
https://www.fairobserver.com/business/technology/pakistan-digital-authority-building-a-citizen-centric-digital-future/
Artificial intelligence: Promise and risk
AI is rapidly emerging as one of the most influential technologies of the 21st century, offering significant potential to improve efficiency, governance, education and economic opportunity. In Pakistan, this promise is already being explored in some institutional arenas. For example, courts and several provincial governments are beginning to experiment with AI tools to improve administrative efficiency, such as case management and document review, helping reduce bureaucratic delays and improve service delivery.
Alongside government adoption, regulators are actively considering how to govern AI in complex sectors like finance. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and related bodies are engaged in drafting frameworks and guidelines that could govern how AI and algorithmic systems are used in the banking sector, with an emphasis on issues such as data security, fairness and transparency, aligning with broader digital policy priorities found in Pakistan’s national AI strategy discussions.
In the education sector, AI-driven technologies are reshaping traditional practices. Smart learning platforms, virtual tutors and automated assessment tools have begun to offer more personalized learning pathways for students and reduce routine administrative burdens for teachers. Studies show educators experiencing efficiency gains and improved engagement when using AI for lesson planning and content generation, though these benefits are highly uneven across contexts.
However, these technological advances are not evenly distributed. Persistent challenges such as inadequate digital infrastructure, limited internet access, uneven device availability and low levels of digital literacy continue to hinder equitable AI adoption across Pakistan’s education system and beyond. Research on digital inclusion highlights how rural and marginalized communities, in particular, remain disproportionately excluded from the advantages of AI, compounding existing inequalities rather than closing them.
Moreover, without robust governance, AI systems can pose real risks, from reinforcing biases or misinterpretations to exposing sensitive data if privacy safeguards are absent. Ethical considerations around algorithmic fairness and transparency are increasingly part of policy debates, especially as stakeholders call for frameworks that protect both citizens and institutions as AI becomes more widespread.
The Pakistan Digital Authority: A central role
The PDA is positioned as the principal institutional mechanism for translating the country’s digital vision into coordinated national action. Tasked with implementing the National Digital Master Plan, built upon the pillars of digital economy, digital society and digital governance, the Authority is responsible for aligning federal and provincial initiatives, formulating a National Data Strategy and establishing standards for cloud infrastructure and data interoperability. Through these functions, the PDA seeks to transform fragmented digital efforts into a unified and strategically directed national framework.
When effectively implemented, the PDA can integrate Pakistan’s diverse digital initiatives into a cohesive, future-ready system capable of delivering measurable social and economic benefits. Coordinated governance structures, interoperable data systems and standardized infrastructure can significantly enhance administrative efficiency, enable evidence-based policymaking and expand access to public services across regions.
@AdameMedia
BREAKING: 🚨 🇮🇳 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 AI WIPES OUT $50 BILLION from Indian OUTSOURCING companies
In 2026, so far:
Nifty IT is down 20.77%
TCS is down 19.95%.
Infosys is down 21%.
Wipro is down 24%.
HCL Tech is down 17%.
For nearly 30 years, global corporations relied on Indian firms for cheap labour.
AI capability is increasing, meaning work previously outsourced to Indian teams at lower cost can be outsourced to AI at an even lower cost.
I’ve seen this myself in my ten year white collar career at three SP500 companies. It’s only accelerated over time.
Market Research organisations warn that economies heavily dependent on white collar outsourcing could face disproportionate disruption as AI driven productivity accelerates.
India sits directly at the center of that transition.
https://x.com/AdameMedia/status/2026534748516925834?s=20
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Market Crashed on AI Fears, CITRINI Research Report Sent Tremors All over the World
https://www.youtube.com/live/OteLI9ZJvDg?si=Up5XtewuD_VquY19
It began after a bearish report was published over the weekend by a little known firm called Citrini Research.
The report, released on social media Sunday, outlined the potential risks to various segments of the global economy, using hypothetical scenarios set in the future, specifically calling out food delivery services and credit card companies as ones facing trouble.
Citrini Research, founded by James van Geelen, presented a scenario set in June 2028 where AI’s disruption has caused mass unemployment for white collar workers, declining consumer spending, software-backed loan defaults and economic contraction. Still, the report notes clearly — “What follows is a scenario, not a prediction.”
Alap Shah, co-author of a Citrini Research report and CIO of Lotus Technology Management joined Bloomberg China Show to discuss.
https://youtu.be/xsdpKcFwpt4?si=3pqTkEUmzhXD02A5
AI Overview
Agentic AI is expected to significantly transform, rather than simply eliminate, the job market by shifting the focus from manual task execution to the management of AI systems. While some entry-level and repetitive cognitive roles are at risk of automation, the technology is poised to create new positions, resulting in a shift in required skills rather than a total replacement of the human workforce.
McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company
+2
Key Impacts on Jobs
Job Transformation > Replacement: AI is more likely to change job roles, with 54% of jobs expected to be "moderately" transformed and only a small percentage fully automated.
High-Risk Areas: Entry-level roles, data entry, administrative positions, and routine content creation are most exposed to automation.
Massive Productivity Gains: Agentic AI can operate with high autonomy, with projections indicating it could manage 15% of day-to-day work decisions by 2028.
New Role Creation: The rise of agentic AI is creating new jobs, such as AI trainers, AI ethics officers, AI system managers, and "M-shaped" supervisors.
YouTube
YouTube
+6
Impact on Specific Industries
White-Collar Work: Technologies like Claude Code are already reshaping computer-based jobs, with some predictions suggesting up to 50% of entry-level white-collar roles could be impacted within 1–5 years.
Finance & Tech: These sectors are seeing the largest potential for disruption,, with some reports suggesting a potential for 60-80% of development jobs to be impacted by agentic coding.
Logistics & Customer Service: Agentic AI is already being used for end-to-end customer query resolution and supply chain optimization, replacing traditional support roles.
Gartner
Gartner
+5
Essential Human Skills for the Future
To remain competitive, workers will need to focus on skills that are difficult for AI to replicate, including:
AI Fluency: The ability to use, manage, and collaborate with AI tools.
Complex Problem-Solving & Judgment: Human oversight is still essential for tasks requiring, ethical decision-making, and high-stakes judgment.
Emotional Intelligence & Creativity: Skills in areas like, care, and high-level strategy.
Gartner
Gartner
+3
Conclusion
Agentic AI is moving from simple automation to, autonomous execution of workflows. While this will lead to a "painful" reshaping of some industries, it is also expected to enhance human productivity and create new, more strategic roles for those who adapt to working alongside AI, rather than resisting it.
McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company
+4
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/india-technology-jobs-ai.html
Artificial intelligence promises to automate the white-collar work that made India a tech powerhouse. The country is racing to adapt before it’s too late.
In Gurugram, the sprawling tech suburb outside New Delhi, Krishna Khandelwal is using artificial intelligence to build an army of chatbots designed to eliminate the kind of jobs that once lifted India into the ranks of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Since last summer, his start-up, Hunar.AI, has offered companies bespoke A.I. voice agents that steer job applicants through virtually every step of the hiring process, from résumé screening to orientation.
“For onboarding,” he said in an interview in the company’s headquarters in a shared work space, “you don’t need humans at all.”
For a quarter century, India has made itself the world’s back office, providing an educated, English-speaking work force to do tasks more cheaply than in the United States or Europe. The industry today employs more than six million people and is worth nearly $300 billion, more than 7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Now, A.I. threatens to do to India what its outsourcing model did to the rest of the world: replace hundreds of thousands of office workers.
Economies everywhere are bracing for an era in which A.I. tools automate entire categories of white-collar work, but the brunt could fall hardest on India, undermining two decades of effort to climb the value chain and establish a place in the global tech world.
“It’s a matter of time,” said Deedy Das, a partner at Menlo Ventures, an investment firm that closely tracks A.I. “Markets are pretty efficient. If a tool exists that does a job cheaper, it will be adopted,” he said. “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened at a faster clip, but it will.”
The tremors are already being felt. Tata Consultancy Services, one of India’s largest employers, has shrunk its work force to 580,000, a decline of more than 20,000 from a peak in 2022, when it hired 100,000 new workers in one year alone.
Its main rival, Infosys, has also slowed hiring, while dozens of smaller start-ups laid off workers across the country in 2025, according to Inc42, a digital economy news outlet in India.
Graduates of the country’s universities and technical colleges are finding fewer openings, forcing them to scramble to “upskill,” an increasingly popular term in the context of learning the A.I. technology that is reshaping the industry.
Tech stocks in India were already slumping this year, but a speculative report on Feb. 22 by Citrini Research, an analytics company based in the United States, sent them spiraling, by painting a doomsday scenario about A.I.’s impact on India in particular.
“The entire model was built on one value proposition: Indian developers cost a fraction of their American counterparts,” the report said, imagining the world in the not-so-distant future of 2028. “But the marginal cost of an A.I. coding agent had collapsed to, essentially, the cost of electricity.”
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister since 2014, has recognized the challenge. Like many leaders, he has pledged to make the country an A.I. power, including by overseeing international deals and urging the country’s own software engineers to develop new technologies and export them to the world.
“There have been certain turning points that have shaped entire countries,” Mr. Modi said during an international conference on A.I. in New Delhi last month, according to a translation of his remarks. “These turning points set the direction of civilization and transform the pace of development. Artificial intelligence is one such transformation in history.”
It is far from clear, however, whether India is positioned to make that transformation. While it has a highly educated work force, it lacks the infrastructure and natural resources needed to power A.I. products.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-05/us-won-t-allow-india-to-become-rival-like-china-official-says
The US won’t give India the same kind of economic advantages it gave China, which allowed that country to emerge as a major competitor, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on Thursday, signaling Washington’s cautiousness in negotiations over a trade deal.
While the US wants to work with India to unlock its “limitless potential,” India should understand that “we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago,” Landau said at the Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics.
Landau also offered to work with India to address long and short term issues in meeting its energy challenges as supply disruptions from the Middle East crisis threaten fuel stockpiles.
India has avoided taking sides in the widening conflict, as it finalizes a trade deal under negotiation since US President Donald Trumptook office. Washington last month cut tariffs on Indian goods to 18% from 50% after several rounds of talks.
India, like other countries, is attempting to balance growth at a time when the US is using tariffs in geopolitical negotiations. It is attempting to diversify and reduce its reliance on the US as a trade partner. It signed a trade deal with the European Union, apart from deals with several other nations.
“It is in our interest and we think it is also in India’s interest to be partners,” said Landau. “We have many many win-win situations with India.”
China’s Aerospace Development Industry Investment Group Co. says it plans investments in advanced technology industries and mining and minerals
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2635443/pakistan
ISLAMABAD: A Chinese aerospace firm has expressed interest in investing up to $10 billion in various sectors in Pakistan, the information ministry in Islamabad said on Thursday.
China is a major ally and investor in Pakistan and has pledged over $65 billion in investment in road, infrastructure and development projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), besides several Chinese private sector manufacturers undertaking joint ventures in the South Asian country.
Pakistan offers significant investment potential owing to its strategic geographic location connecting South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, a large consumer market of over 240 million people, and a young and dynamic workforce. The country also provides attractive incentives for investors.
On Thursday, officials of the Aerospace Development Industry Investment Group Co. of China met with Pakistan’s Board of Investment Minister Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh to discuss investment opportunities and potential avenues in the country, according to the Pakistani information ministry.
“They informed that Aerospace Development Industry Investment Group is an international investment group with an AAA corporate credit rating, engaged in strategic industrial investments in areas including advanced technologies, aerospace development, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, drone technologies, and energy projects,” the ministry said.
“The delegation expressed keen interest in investing between USD 5 billion to USD 10 billion in Pakistan across multiple sectors including mining and minerals, advanced technology industries, and industrial development. They also emphasized their interest in collaborating with Pakistan on skill development initiatives.”
Sheikh appreciated the interest shown by the Chinese company, saying that Pakistan is taking concrete steps to improve investment climate in the country.
“The Board of Investment is actively working on regulatory reforms to facilitate investors, promote ease of doing business and streamline business procedures,” he was quoted as saying.
The minister referred to the Pakistan–China Business-to-Business Conference held in September last year, where more than 300 companies from Pakistan and China participated and signed 167 Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) aimed at strengthening bilateral investment and trade cooperation.
“Pakistan and China already have a Free Trade Agreement, and Pakistan is now focusing on increasing its value-added exports to further enhance economic cooperation,” he said.
Sheikh also briefed the delegation on the incentives available for investors in Pakistan’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs), including exemption from income tax and sales tax on the import of machinery, to promote industrial investment.
https://www.ft.com/content/1183774f-73b7-47d9-b47b-9fa51b131350
India’s telecom regulator has proposed a 40 per cent cut in the reserve price of spectrum, the radio frequencies used by the telecoms sector to transmit voice and data.
In the early years, spectrum sales used to fetch significant revenue windfalls for the government and even result in bidding wars. This spurred the regulator to consistently raise prices. The last significant year was 2022, when the government managed to raise Rs1.5tn ($17.9bn), with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio emerging as the top bidder. But demand has weakened as the telecom industry in India consolidated into two major players (three if you count the beleaguered Vodafone Idea). By 2024 revenues had dropped sharply to Rs113bn, and the last few auctions have seen lacklustre interest from operators. The government is also sitting on a large pile of unsold spectrum now that the initial frenzy to acquire as much as possible has subsided. In 2016, it sold 40 per cent of what it offered. In 2024, the government sold less than a quarter of what it had made available. The regulator is now recommending that all available spectrum across nine frequency bands be put up for auction at a heavy discount. The reserve price for the 900Hz band, the most efficient one for mobile broadband, has been cut by half even for big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai. While these moves suggest the regulator is finally admitting that its past strategy failed (I am old enough to remember the “spectrum is the new oil” days), they still fall short of a comprehensive overhaul the system needs. A more effective model, for example, would allocate spectrum based on demand, rather than an annual auction. The government may also not have fully absorbed the lessons of the past. The telecommunication department is reportedly considering a 5 per cent levy on adjusted gross revenue for satellite communication spectrum, the new cash cow, despite regulators recommending 4 per cent. To deploy yet another animal idiom, this risks killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Again.
The auction, conducted over three rounds of bidding held on 10 March, raised $507m for the government from the sale of licences for 480 MHz of spectrum across multiple bands, with the country’s mobile market leader Jazz (aka JazzWorld), a subsidiary of internal operator Veon, leading the way.
https://www.telecomtv.com/content/5g/pakistan-completes-milestone-5g-spectrum-auction-55046/
Pakistan has completed its 5G auction
The process has dramatically increased the spectrum holdings of the country’s three main mobile operators
Mobile market leader Jazz picked up the most spectrum, just ahead of Ufone
Good news for Pakistan’s 202 million mobile users – the country’s government has concluded its 5G spectrum auction, which increased the total spectrum available to mobile operators from 274 MHz to 754 MHz, heralding not only the introduction of 5G services but also better quality 4G connectivity and digital services.
The auction, conducted over three rounds of bidding held on 10 March, raised $507m for the government from the sale of licences for 480 MHz of spectrum across multiple bands, with the country’s mobile market leader Jazz (aka JazzWorld), a subsidiary of internal operator Veon, leading the way.
The country’s regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), had put 597 MHz of spectrum up for grabs, with the country’s three main mobile operators – Jazz (aka Pakistan Mobile Communications Ltd), Ufone (Pak Telecom Mobile Ltd) and Zong (CMPak Ltd) – registered as qualified bidders.
All of the licences up for grabs in the 2600 MHz and 2300 MHz bands, regarded as prime 5G frequencies, were sold, while some were surplus to requirements in the 3500 MHz (also good for 5G services) and 700 MHz bands: None of the licences for 1800 MHz or 2100 MHz spectrum were sold.
Jazz, which ended January with 74.2 million mobile customers (36.6% market share), snapped up 50 MHz in the 3500 MHz band, 70 MHz in the 2600 MHz band, 50 MHz in the 2300 MHz band, and 20 MHz in the 700 MHz band, for a total of 190 MHz of spectrum: It will pay $239.5m for its licences, according to Veon.
https://www.techjuice.pk/pakistans-5g-auction-sets-speed-targets-heres-how-fast-your-internet-could-get/
4G download speeds for new users gradually increase from 20 Mbps to 50 Mbps.
5G aims for 50-100 Mbps for at least 20% of consumers by 2035.