AI CITY IN THE WAITING

As Delhi gets ready for the country's biggest AI event today, which puts India at the centre of the tech world, city's many forays into managing its urban infra with AI too come into focus. The capital is hungry for tech and solutions to its woes, but its small steps make the journey that much longer, say Vismay Basu and Srestha Sarkar

- Vismay Basu and Srestha Sarkar

Beautification works being carried out in the capital ahead of the India AI Summit scheduled for February 16

THE India AI Impact Summit 2026, convened by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IndiaAI Mission within the Digital India programme, will be held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi starting Monday.

This year's edition is likely to be the biggest the country has seen so far in any city. With hundreds of foreign delegates, including top tech CEOs, heads of states and business leaders, already in Delhi for it, the city's hold over artificial intelligence is as much in focus as are the topics of urban governance which will be discussed in the next five days.

When Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis and Bill Gates discuss the theme of "Democratising AI" under the summit's three pillars of People, Planet and Progress, they would be signalling both ambition and geopolitical intent.

The spectacle is impressive. The articulation is confident. Yet summits, however meticulously designed, cannot by themselves recalibrate a city's lived reality. They may designate direction, but they cannot substitute for the execution. The question that must animate any serious assessment of the summit is not whether AI can transform the world in abstraction, but whether it can be domesticated into Delhi's administrative fabrics in ways that are precise, accountable and socially equitable.

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