For decades, technology was viewed through the narrow lens of efficiency—doing the same tasks for less money. Krishna Chhattaji, Head of Marketing for Google Cloud India, argues that AI has shattered this dimension. We are now entering an era defined by the “capacity to serve” at a scale previously thought impossible.
In a country of 1.4 billion, challenges in healthcare, education, and food security are often issues of distribution and volume. Chhattaji suggests that AI’s ability to handle these “impossible” scales will unleash a massive wave of “job energy” throughout the Indian economy, particularly as the nation’s youth dividend begins to experiment with the technology.
The End of Mediocrity
The most provocative takeaway from the summit concerns the nature of future employment. Chhattaji noted that AI is the “enemy of mediocrity”. In this new landscape:
- High Performers: Those who excel in their domains will find AI to be a powerful co-pilot that amplifies their expertise.
- The Mediocre: Those who are “just getting by” are under immediate threat.
The message is clear: the job market is shifting toward deep domain expertise. For the next generation, “knowing how to use AI” will be secondary to being an expert in a specific field like agriculture or medicine, using the technology as a lever to apply that knowledge.
“Small AI” and the Rural Revolution
Mahesh Utam Chandani, the World Bank’s Regional Director for Digital plus AI, highlighted that the real revolution in emerging markets isn’t happening in Silicon Valley-style Large Language Models, but in “Small AI”.
While Western economies worry about routine cognitive tasks being automated, India is using AI to augment human roles where they are needed most. Utam Chandani cited examples of:
- Healthcare: AI systems reading chest X-rays to assist rural doctors.
- Finance: Creating digital data trails for female artisans to build credit histories for the first time.
- Agriculture: Small-scale models providing crop rotation and weather advice directly to farmers.
India’s Strategic “Digital Stack”
India’s unique advantage lies in its Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Experts believe that while other nations struggle with fragmented data, the “India Stack”—comprising Aadhaar, UPI, and now AI-driven data layers—is a “planet-scale” foundation that no other country possesses.
This infrastructure allows India to “package DPI in a box” and export it to the Global South. The summit concluded with a bold strategy for the nation: “Share seamlessly and steal shamelessly”—meaning India should lead the world in sharing its use cases while rapidly adopting and localizing successful innovations from abroad.
Bottom Line
The India AI Summit has stripped away the dystopian fear-mongering of total job loss. For emerging markets, AI is being framed as an essential tool for social mobility. It is a technology that rewards excellence, empowers the underserved, and turns the “impossible scale” of India’s problems into its greatest economic opportunity.
