Parliament Question: Research in AI and emerging technologies

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RAJYA SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 3246 TO BE ANSWERED ON: 20.03.2026 RESEARCH IN AI AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES 3246 #. SHRI PRADIP KUMAR VARMA: Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: (a) the number of projects sanctioned under the National AI Literacy Program; (b) the Central investment released for Artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies; (c) the number of industry-academic collaboration projects; and (d) the targets for AI innovation expansion in the coming years? ANSWER MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI JITIN PRASADA) (a) to (d): India's AI strategy is based on the Hon'ble Prime Minister's vision of democratizing technology. It aims to address India-centric challenges and create opportunities. The Government is promoting literacy in AI and emerging technologies through various initiatives including YUVAI (Youth for Unnati and Vikas with AI), FutureSkills PRIME, and AI skilling programmes by NIELIT. These programmes have enabled large-scale participation of students and professionals across the country. National AI Literacy Program The YUVA AI for All: National AI Literacy Campaign is an initiative under the IndiaAI Mission. The campaign is linked to National Youth Day, observed on 12 January, to promote awareness of artificial intelligence. The initiative aligns with the Government’s vision of Viksit Bharat, expansion of Digital Public Infrastructure. It aims to provide basic AI knowledge to students and youth across the country in an inclusive manner. The initiative seeks to prepare citizens for emerging technologies and future workforce requirements. AI literacy is promoted as an essential life skill rather than a specialised or advanced technical subject.The campaign encourages learners to complete a short, self-paced foundational course titled AI 101. The course is available on platforms such as iGOT Karmayogi, DIKSHA, FutureSkills PRIME, and other digital portals. As on date, 4,69,951 learners have registered for the course and 1,31,785 have completed it. The initiative reflects India’s commitment to inclusive, responsible, and democratic adoption of artificial intelligence. IndiaAI Mission: In March 2024, Government of India launched IndiaAI mission with outlay of Rs 10,372 Cr for development of the overall AI ecosystem in the country. It is a strategic initiative to establish a robust and inclusive Al ecosystem aligned with India's development goals through the seven pillars. These include IndiaAI Compute, AIKosh, IndiaAI Foundation Models, IndiaAI FutureSkills, Startup Financing, Application Development and Safe & Trusted Al. The implementation of ‘IndiaAI Mission’ is with a total outlay of Rs. 10,371.92 Cr for a period of 5 years. The detailed allocation of budgetary outlay among its seven key pillars is as follows: # Components Total Allocation (₹ Cr) 1. IndiaAI Compute Capacity 4563.36 2. IndiaAI Foundation Models 1971.37 3. IndiaAI Datasets Platform 199.55 4. IndiaAI Application Development Initiative 689.05 5. IndiaAI FutureSkills 882.94 6. IndiaAI Startup Financing 1942.5 7. Safe & Trusted AI 20.46 8. IndiaAI Overheads and Contingency @1% 102.69 Total 10,371.92 The funds allocated and released since the inception of IndiaAI Mission is as under: Sr. No. Year Expenditure (Cr) 1 2024-25 21.79 2 2025-26 497.08* 3 2026-27 - * As on 13.03.2026 Industry-academic collaboration projects under IndiaAI mission: • IndiaAI, in collaboration with Meta, is establishing the Centre for Generative AI “Srijan” at IIT Jodhpur to advance open-source generative AI research in India The centre focuses on the development of indigenous AI applications, strengthening research capacity, and promoting skill development in generative AI technologies • Under the IndiaAI FutureSkills pillar, Data and AI Labs are being established in Tier-2 and Tier- 3 cities to offer foundational courses in Data and AI. These labs are being set up in collaboration with academic institutions and industry partnersExamples include facilities at NIELIT Karkardooma Delhi, ICIT Nagaland, C-DAC Mohali and MCTE Mhow (Madhya Pradesh) Initiatives for Expansion of AI Innovation in India: Development of the Indigenous Foundational Model The IndiaAI Foundation Models pillar aims to develop India’s own large multimodal models trained on Indian datasets and languages. • In the initial phases, Twelve (12) organisations and consortia, including startups, industry players and academic institutions, have been selected for developing Large and Small Language Models • Sovereign models of Sarvam AI, BharatGen and Gnani were launched during the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026. These models have shown strong performance on Indic language benchmarks, and in some cases perform better than leading frontier models on specific tasks The resulting AI models are expected to contribute to the open-source ecosystem by making them available through AIKosh platform for other startups and researchers. This will fuel innovation across India’s startup and research community. As part of the same, Sarvam and BharatGen models are now available on AIKosh platform for the developer community to develop AI based applications. Developing AI based applications and startups Thirty (30) applications are being developed under IndiaAI mission, focusing on India-specific problems. These applications belong to critical sectors notably Agriculture, Health, Climate change and disaster. Sector-specific hackathons and innovation challenges have also been organised in collaboration with organisations including the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, Geological Survey of India, Ministry of AYUSH, Ministry of MSME, NFRA and National Cancer Grid (NCG). From these initiatives, 10 startups have been identified for scaling up their solutions. Also, IndiaAI Startups Global program was launched in collaboration with Station F (Paris) and HEC Paris. Under this program, 10 Indian AI startups have been selected and supported to expand into the European market. It supports Indian AI startups in accessing global innovation ecosystems and expanding into international markets. These startups are already developing innovative solutions across sectors such as governance, smart cities, document intelligence, and enterprise automation. Affordable Compute Capacity for AI Development Under IndiaAI Compute Capacity Pillar, a national AI compute capacity has been operationalized through empaneled AI service providers offering GPU access on cloud at subsidized rates to eligible users.• As on date, 38,231 GPUs have been onboarded from 14 empaneled service providers under the IndiaAI Compute Capacity framework • Government of India provides access to these GPUs at subsidized rates. The average rate is approximately Rs 65 per GPU per hour, except for select high-end GPUs • Apart from compute, empanelled providers are delivering storage, networking, AI platforms and other supporting services necessary for AI model development and deployment Strengthening AI research ecosystem in India Under the IndiaAI FutureSkills pillar, the Government is developing an extensive AI talent and research pipeline by supporting 500 PhD fellows, 5,000 postgraduates and 8,000 undergraduates. • 27 IndiaAI Data and AI Labs have been established in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities through NIELIT to conduct coursework in AI, data curation, annotation, cleaning and applied data science • 543 ITIs and Polytechnics across all States/UTs have been approved to set up additional IndiaAI Data and AI Labs • More than 250 fellowships have already been awarded under the programme to promote high- quality research in Artificial Intelligence Safe & Trusted AI This pillar under the IndiaAI Mission seeks to balance innovation with strong governance frameworks to ensure responsible AI adoption. 13 projects have been selected addressing issues like machine unlearning, AI algorithm auditing tools, privacy-preserving machine learning, explainability, and evaluating gender bias in Agriculture LLMs, etc. *******