Artificial Intelligence is no longer a distant promise—it is a present force reshaping economies and redefining progress. It is not just disrupting industries; it is setting the direction for the future.
At the recent AI Impact Summit, India made a clear commitment: to use AI not merely for technological advancement, but as a driver of inclusive growth. The presence of global leaders and their investment pledges reflected strong confidence in India’s AI vision and potential. The message was clear—India intends not just to adopt AI, but to lead with it.
The Government of India's AI Mission, backed by a ₹10,300 crore investment and a national AI computing infrastructure of 38,000 GPUs, represents a bold leap forward. This mission is designed to democratize access to AI, ensuring that its benefits reach every sector—from healthcare and agriculture to education and governance.
Initiatives like SAHI (Secure AI for Health Initiative) and BODH (Benchmarking Open Data Platform for Health AI), exemplifying how India is embedding responsibility into its AI journey. These programs aim to balance innovation with safeguards, ensuring that advances in healthcare AI respect privacy and consent while delivering life-changing outcomes.
Equally significant is the Create in India Mission (2026), which focuses on building a future-ready workforce and generating new AI jobs. By investing in skilling and training, India is preparing its youth to thrive in a world where AI literacy will be essential.
Participation in global collaborations like Pax Silica underscores the ambition to be a trusted partner in shaping secure and resilient AI ecosystems. This approach ensures that India’s AI journey is not isolated, but integrated into the global narrative of responsible innovation. India has credentials to claim. Previously AI interventions like “Atman AI” were created to analyse radiological images and distinguish between normal, COVID-19, and pneumonia cases using machine learning.
By weaving inclusion into innovation, India is setting a precedent for how emerging technologies can serve society at large. COVID vaccination drive reached every Indian creating a world record. The AI Impact Summit was more than a showcase of progress; it was a declaration of intent—that India will lead with vision, responsibility, and inclusivity.
The Challenge of Misuse?
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping India’s future, but alongside its promise lies a pressing challenge: restraining its misuse. Criminals in India have begun deploying AI in increasingly sophisticated ways. AI itself is neutral—it is neither “better” nor “worse” in criminal hands. What matters is how it is used, and whether society builds the right infrastructure to channel it toward lawful, ethical innovation.
Massive Financial Losses Nationwide
In 2024, India reported an estimated ₹22,845 crore (≈ ₹228 billion) loss in 36.4 lakh financial fraud incidents were reported in 2024 alone to cybercriminals through digital frauds — a 206 % increase compared with ₹7,465 crore lost in 2023. These figures were officially submitted to the Indian Parliament by the Ministry of Home Affairs, based on reports from the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) and the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS).
What Types of Digital Frauds Are Causing Losses?
The reported cases include a wide range of schemes that have grown in sophistication, including:
• Investment and trading scams
• “Digital arrest” scams where fraudsters impersonate authorities
• Online payment and UPI fraud
• Fake apps and phishing attacks
• Impersonation of banks or officials
Many of these exploit automated techniques, social engineering, and AI assisted scripts to make scams more believable.
Protecting young
technocrats from
indulging in such activity
Stopping fraud is one part of the equation. The greater responsibility lies in protecting young technocrats from indulging in such activity. India’s AI talent pool is vast, and without ethical guidance, some may be tempted by the quick gains of misuse. AI-related fraud involving Indian nationals has become a growing concern both within India and abroad, particularly in the United States and Southeast Asia.
US Elderly Scam: A 23-year-old Indian national, Atharva Shailesh Sathawane, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in Florida for defrauding elderly victims of over $6 million.
While AI itself is neutral, criminals have weaponized it to exploit trust and scale deception. Recent cases in the United States and Southeast Asia show how Indian nationals have been implicated in large-scale fraud networks, exploiting AI to impersonate executives, forge documents, and run online scams. These incidents not only erode trust but also risk tarnishing India’s global reputation as a hub for ethical innovation.
The challenge is twofold:
• restraining misuse through stronger laws and international cooperation, and protecting young technocrats from being lured into fraudulent activities
• to ensure that the same creativity which could be misdirected into scams, is instead nurtured into innovation.
Building Ethical Infrastructure
The recent controversy surrounding Galgotias University should serve as a caution for India’s higher education ecosystem after the high-profile India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. Response to my query on ChatGPT indicates that universities risk confusing integration with invention and publicity with proof. It is unfortunate that wizards ignored the basic rules.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using imported robotic platforms or pre-built AI models for research and experimentation; the problem arises when these are projected as fully indigenous breakthroughs without transparent technical disclosure. Such claims are scrutinized instantly by experts, and reputational damage can outweigh any short-term media attention. If India’s universities truly wish to build credible AI brands, they must prioritize peer review over press releases, documentation over drama, and measurable societal impact over spectacle. Real prestige will not come from viral robotic showcases but from verifiable contributions—whether in fraud detection, AI safety, healthcare diagnostics, or cybersecurity—areas where the nation urgently needs innovation.
The lesson is clear: in the AI era, precision in communication is as vital as precision in code, and credibility is the most valuable capital an academic institution possesses.
India must create an ecosystem that rewards responsibility:
I have been writing in my various articles that becoming a Viksit Bharat has a responsibility to protect the wealth being created from fraudsters and scammers. If we can lead the world in reducing the incidents of cyber arrest, impersonation and phishing threats we may create new opportunities. With 15 lac engineers turning out annually we have the opportunity, potential and the will to do it. What is needed is a robust system to skill these young minds;
• Accessible Innovation Hubs: Give young technocrats legitimate platforms to experiment and grow.
• Ethics in Curriculum: Make AI ethics and digital responsibility core to education.
• Funding for Responsible Startups: Provide grants and recognition for projects that demonstrate lawful, ethical AI use.
• Follow the leader: Creating this eco system can be self-financing as well, I used AI to crystalise my random thoughts and got the following actionable idea.
The Vision: Building India’s Digital "Agniveer" Force
While existing schemes address general AI, they lack the scale and "mission-mode" intensity required to defend a multi trillion-dollar digital economy. India needs AI–Cyber Defence Fellowship (NAICDF) under MeitY, designed as a high-octane, one-year specialized program to build a frontline cyber army.
1. High-Stakes Talent Attraction
• Agniveer-Scale Stipend: A fixed ₹50,000 per month stipend to attract the sharpest 1% of technical talent, prioritizing graduates from NIRF-ranked institutions and proven ethical hackers.
• National Service Identity: Fellows are not just students; they are "Digital Defenders" sworn to protect the national interest.
2. One-Year "Battle-Ready" Training
• Arigorous, industry-aligned curriculum focusing on:
• AI-Driven Fraud Detection: Building real-time models to intercept UPI and fintech scams.
• Deep-Tech Forensics: Master-level training in Cyber Forensics and AI-generated threat mitigation (Deepfakes/LLM-based attacks).
• Defensive Architecture: Designing secure, self-healing systems for critical Information Infrastructure.
3. Mandatory "Frontline" Deployment
This is not a traditional internship; it is a mandatory deployment phase. Fellows are embedded directly into:
• Government & Law Enforcement: CERT-In, I4C (MHA) Cybercrime Cells, and Intelligence agencies.
• Financial Guardians: Fraud monitoring units of PSU Banks and leading Fintech firms.
• Strategic Startups: MeitY-funded cybersecurity startups to fuel domestic innovation.
With 100,000 fellows annually, the financial commitment would be:
100,000 × ₹6 lakh per year = ₹6,000 crore annual investment
When measured against reported cyber-fraud losses of over ₹22,800 crore annually — and rising rapidly — this investment is not an expense but economic insurance. Even a modest reduction in fraud will eliminate exponential growth and would offset the cost.
More importantly, this initiative would do more than curb financial crime. It would:
• Strengthen digital trust in India’s payment ecosystem
• Accelerate investigations and improve conviction support
• Deter offenders through stronger detection capability
• Position India as a nation where digital growth is inseparable from ethical, secure transactions.
Beyond Scale: What Indian Hackathons Can Learn from TreeHacks organised by stanfor university.
India has proudly positioned itself as a global innovation powerhouse. Flagship events such as Smart India Hackathon demonstrate the country’s ability to mobilize talent at an extraordinary scale, engaging lakhs of students to solve real-world challenges posed by ministries and public institutions. The model is inclusive, ambitious, and nationally impactful. Yet, scale alone does not define innovation leadership.
Recently the author had on line interaction with Priya Ganadas, a mentor at TreeHacks at Stanford University. It offers a contrasting but equally compelling template Across the globe, Smaller in size but sharper in focus, TreeHacks emphasizes depth over breadth — cultivating startup-ready solutions, facilitating intense mentorship, and embedding venture capital exposure directly into the hackathon ecosystem.
The difference is not about superiority; it is about orientation.
Indian hackathons excel at problem statements tied to governance and public service. These can evolve by integrating stronger startup pipelines. Instead of ending with prize distribution, events should connect top teams with incubators, investors, and structured follow-up programs. Innovation must move from prototype to product.
While mass participation is India’s strength, curated final stages can elevate solution sophistication. Pre-hack bootcamps, domain-specific tracks, and deeper technical mentoring would sharpen outcomes without compromising inclusivity.
Another lesson lies in mentorship intensity. TreeHacks thrives on continuous interaction between participants and industry engineers, ensuring architectural rigor and iterative improvement. Embedding such structured, real-time feedback mechanisms will take to next level.
A robust alumni network, international participation in select tracks, and global showcasing of success stories could elevate India’s hackathons from national initiatives to global innovation platforms.
India does not need to replicate TreeHacks, but to adapt what aligns with its ambitions. By combining its unmatched scale with deeper entrepreneurial integration and long-term support systems, Indian hackathons can transition from being large competitions to becoming engines of sustained innovation.
From “Mera Joota Hai Japani” to Made-in-India AI: Rewriting a Nation’s Innovation Story
When Raj Kapoor sang “Mera joota hai Japani” in 1955, the lyric carried more than just playful irony. It reflected a global stereotype of the time—Japanese goods were seen as cheap imitations, lacking originality and durability. Post–World War II, Japan’s exports were often dismissed, and the line became a cultural shorthand for that perception.
Yet, within two decades, Japan rewrote its story. Through Kaizen (continuous improvement), rigorous quality control, and a relentless focus on innovation, Japanese companies transformed their image. Sony’s Walkman, Toyota’s lean production system, and Honda’s engineering breakthroughs became symbols of originality and excellence. What was once mocked in popular culture became a global benchmark.
The shift from aspersion to admiration is a powerful reminder: nations can redefine themselves through vision, discipline, and innovation. Japan’s journey shows that originality is not born overnight—it is cultivated through infrastructure, values, and collective effort.
For India today, especially in its AI journey, the lesson is clear. Just as Japan turned “Made in Japan” into a badge of pride, India must ensure that “Made in India” in AI stands for trust, responsibility, and originality. The AI Impact Summit echoed this vision: innovation must walk hand in hand with inclusion and integrity.
India’s public sector record shows that scale and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Institutions such as Engineers India Limited, NBCC (India) Limited, and Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Setu Nigam have repeatedly demonstrated that complex infrastructure projects can be delivered with professionalism, accountability, and adherence to process. Time to create similar examples in AI ventures.
Conclusion
The lesson for India’s emerging AI and cyber ecosystem is clear: credibility is built not only through speed and ambition, but through systems that enforce responsibility. Just as infrastructure giants institutionalized engineering discipline, digital institutions must institutionalize ethical AI deployment, verifiable innovation, and accountable cyber defence. India’s growth story has already proven that delivery and integrity can coexist. The next frontier is ensuring that the same standard defines the nation’s digital transformation.
RAKESH KUMAR
(The content of this article reflects the views of writer and contributor, not necessarily those of the publisher and editor. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only)
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