Over the last few years, the initiatives in AI at the policy level established by the Government of India (GoI) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) have driven significant interest in AI across various segments. The GoI, MeitY, and NASSCOM have all instituted significant programmes around AI to establish a cohesive national AI strategy across these segments.

The report by AIMResearch titled “How The Indian Government Is Championing The AI Revolution”, highlights 21 use cases in seven such sectors – law enforcement, public sector, environment, agriculture, education, energy and healthcare, where AI has been used extensively by the government.

Some of the use cases that report highlights are facial recognition and hotspot analysis, biometric identification, criminal investigation, traffic and crowd management, wearables to empower women safety, optimising revenues in forest, cleaning river, tiger protection, digital agriculture, student progress monitoring and more.

According to the report, technologies such as AI and machine learning will emerge as the most important determinants of growth across the core sectors of the country. Improving agriculture and education, eliminating poverty, and enhancing the reach of  healthcare across the masses are some of the shared objectives of the various states across the country, which they aim to accomplish using AI. The report highlights how the adoption of various actions can build greater economic prosperity for the states in the future.

The report also stresses upon the need for immediate and sustainable action that the government machinery and stakeholders should take to introduce further digital and technological reforms across critical sectors.

This report has been prepared with the objective to help the various systems of both the Central and State governments to learn from the experiences of other states – this would lead to the adoption of best practices to enhance the nation’s AI initiatives. 

It highlights India’s AI strategy and its transformative impact across various segments of the economy, both in terms of access and quality of services. AI in India is now empowering the nation’s workforce and is enabling enterprises to access and build innovative solutions and capabilities, thereby strengthening the nation’s democracy.

The report highlights how India has prioritised the use of AI and increased focus on research and development initiatives, inclusive growth across various economic sectors, capability building of India’s workforce and utilisation in government initiatives and services. 

The report suggested that some of the growth enablers are data ecosystem, policy framework and standardisation of AI algorithms. It also covers some of the startups and companies that are leading the way up for the government to use AI effectively in these domains. 

According to the report, while there have been numerous high-level plans focused on the adoption of AI in India,  the nation has so far developed discrete AI solutions that have been implemented with a narrow scope.

While the GoI has played a unique role in laying the groundwork for a promising digital and data infrastructure, and many government agencies have invested in well-defined areas to build specific AI use cases, a cohesive framework to help scale these initiatives has only recently emerged with the announcement of the GoI’s and NITI Aayog’s AI policies. The report discusses some of these policies along with recommendations by NASSCOM for a roadmap for AI in India. 

Read the complete report here.