India’s World, Volume 2, Issue 2, February 2026
India’s AI Ambition

India’s World continues its monthly journey in 2026 with an issue dedicated to the defining strategic contest of our time: artificial intelligence. As AI reshapes power, productivity, warfare, media, and governance, India’s AI Ambition examines a central question confronting New Delhi today—will India remain a taker of technological rules, or emerge as a credible rule-shaper in the global AI order?

Arriving just ahead of the AI Impact Summit, this issue situates India at a critical inflection point in the geopolitics of technology, shaped by intensifying US–China competition, fragmented global governance, and accelerating innovation. The Argument section opens with Nitin Pai’s provocative call for “sectoral plurilateralism” as India’s pathway to AI power.

The Cover Story brings together leading voices including Santosh Pai, Syed Akbaruddin, Ruchira Kamboj, Manoj Kewalramani, Bharath Reddy, Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, and Konark Bhandari to examine India’s AI moment from multiple angles—global rule-making, the politics of chips and compute, AI at the United Nations, the strategic geography of the digital age, and the power politics shaping India’s technological choices. Together, these essays argue that power in the AI era lies not only in innovation but in the ability to shape standards, laws, and governance regimes.

Beyond geopolitics, India’s World continues to range widely across art and culture, history, law, and theory. Essays on diplomacy, caste, cinema, music, art, and migration reaffirm the magazine’s belief that understanding world politics requires attention to society, memory, and creativity.

Rigorous yet accessible, India’s AI Ambition captures an India negotiating technological transformation with urgency, ambition, and possibility.