India Expands AI Infrastructure to Pursue Global Strategic Agency

The Government of India is rapidly scaling its artificial intelligence infrastructure, with data center capacity growing more than four-fold from 375 MW in 2020 to approximately 1,575 MW. To support this growth, the state is implementing the SHANTI Act to provide clean power via nuclear reactors and establishing environmental norms through the Bureau of Indian Standards and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency.

As part of the IndiaAI Mission, the government has provisioned over 38,000 GPUs and plans to add 20,000 more. This expansion aligns with a push for strategic agency, as advocated by former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and the publication India Narrative. They argue that AI is now an organizing principle of international power, necessitating a strategy of managed interdependence with partners in Europe, Singapore, and the Gulf states.

Complementing these infrastructure gains, Nandan Nilekani argues that India should pivot toward the application layer of AI. He suggests that while Western nations focus on chips and large models, India can lead by creating population-scale use cases in healthcare, agriculture, and education. Nilekani also envisions a future with one million startups by 2035, calling for portable social security to support workers in an increasingly automated economy.