Why AI literacy is key to India's future
As AI solutions become integral to daily digital interactions, the question is no longer just about access to AI tools; it is about the capacity of citizens to engage with them effectively and as responsible users. To truly harness this opportunity, investing in AI literacy is a national imperative, paving the way to empower every citizen to navigate an AI-driven world and actively shape the future.
Recognising AI's transformative potential, the Government of India has launched strategic nationwide initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission, which champions an 'AI for All' vision to democratise the benefits of AI while proactively addressing its risks. The Mission is focused on establishing a comprehensive ecosystem to catalyse AI innovation through strategic partnerships across the public and private sectors.
India's AI compute capacity has seen a dramatic leap through deliberate investment, now standing at 34,333 GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) following the empanelment of multiple providers. This scale positions the country to support world-class AI research and innovation, develop sovereign models and support impactful AI solutions that address real-world challenges. To foster indigenous AI model development, institutions have been selected to build and deploy foundational AI models. Data quality and availability are also being enhanced through initiatives such as the AIKosh platform, which currently hosts over 600 curated Bharat datasets.
Moreover, India's talent pool is already making a global impact. According to the Stanford AI Index Report 2025, India ranked second worldwide in AI skill penetration from 2016 to 2024 with a 252% increase, and has led the world in year-over-year AI talent hiring rates. Alongside this, the Mission is focused on nurturing a robust talent pipeline. Notably, AI skills are being strengthened among the youth in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities through the launch of the IndiaAI Data Labs, which will provide foundational courses in data and AI.
Sustaining this momentum requires building a broader foundation. To ensure that every citizen, not only researchers and developers, can participate meaningfully in an AI-driven future, foundational AI literacy for all has become a strategic national priority. This is especially critical for young learners, our future citizens, who are growing up in a world where AI is already shaping their everyday experiences.
Today's children are already immersed in an environment deeply shaped by AI. More than 80% of rural Indian children aged 14–16 regularly use smartphones, interacting with recommendation engines, autocomplete tools, and chatbots often without realising how these algorithms shape their choices, opinions or behaviour.
This silent immersion offers both promise and peril. AI-driven platforms can deliver personalised learning and adaptive feedback that may have been otherwise inaccessible to learners. At the same time, without the tools to critically engage with AI, learners, especially those from lower-income segments, are more vulnerable to misinformation, privacy risks, and algorithmic bias.
The influence of AI on agency, equity and empowerment will depend on how well individuals are prepared to understand and navigate this technology. Without foundational literacy, young people risk remaining passive consumers rather than active contributors to an inclusive and innovative digital future.
As India accelerates its leadership in AI, building foundational AI literacy at scale is essential. AI literacy refers to the knowledge and practices that help students, teachers and parents understand what AI is, how it shapes their digital lives and how to use it safely and thoughtfully.
AI Samarth is India's first large-scale AI literacy programme designed for underserved communities from Bharat. The initiative aims to empower 50 lakh students, parents and educators across government and affordable private schools with essential knowledge and practices for meaningful and responsible AI engagement.
To mainstream AI literacy, AI Samarth focuses on three core strategies:
Curriculum integration: Developed in partnership with CSF and IIT Madras, the AI Samarth AI Literacy Curriculum is tailored for Bharat's classrooms and available as a public good for states and designed for flexible integration within existing school routines and subject areas
Contextual content: Designed as a multilingual repository of contextually relevant learning materials to make AI literacy accessible, engaging, and comprehensible for students, teachers, and parents across India. The content stack will include curriculum-aligned videos, in-class teaching materials, lesson plans, and assessments tailored to the diverse learning environments in India.
Scalable delivery: Disseminated through online platforms and cascaded teacher training to reach learners across geographies pan-India.
Together, these strategies aim to embed AI literacy into the fabric of school education, nurturing a generation that approaches technology with curiosity, confidence and safety.
This early foundation in AI literacy is critical for enabling the next step: equipping learners with practical skills to thrive in an AI-driven world. Building on this groundwork, the government is advancing skilling in AI through targeted initiatives under the 'FutureSkills' pillar of the IndiaAI Mission. Designed for scale and inclusivity, the initiative is ensuring that high-quality, hands-on AI and data skills reach learners across the country with focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations.
As India advances its AI capabilities through the IndiaAI Mission, which encompasses infrastructure investments, skilling programmes, improved access to high-quality datasets, and the development of AI solutions across critical sectors, the next frontier is ensuring that every citizen is empowered to engage meaningfully and responsibly with AI.
This means recognising that AI literacy and skilling are not separate paths but part of a continuum: literacy enables awareness, informed use, and critical thinking; skilling builds deeper expertise for professional application.
Investing in the continuum of literacy and skilling today will lay the foundation for an India that is not only AI-ready but truly AI-empowered.
This article is authored by Abhishek Singh, CEO, IndiaAI Mission and additional secretary, ministry of electronics and IT, Government of India and Shaveta Sharma-Kukreja, CEO & MD, Central Square Foundation.
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