Tier II and III Cities Lag in AI Awareness and Access to Compute Schemes: Report

While India has made strong progress in building AI infrastructure, expanding data centers, and rolling out government-backed compute initiatives, smaller cities are yet to fully benefit from these efforts, according to the AI Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) report released today in New Delhi.

The India AI RAM Report which has been done in collaboration with the UNESCO, is structured in two parts. Part I focuses on diagnosis and outlines what the current AI landscape in India looks like. Drawing from secondary research and extensive stakeholder consultations, it assesses India’s AI readiness across five key RAM dimensions: legal and regulatory, social and cultural, scientific and educational, economic, and technological and infrastructural. Part II presents policy recommendations on what should be done next.

"This report provides a structured way for countries to reflect on their preparedness across legal, social, economic, scientific, educational and technological dimensions. It translates global ethical principles into actionable policy guidance without hampering innovation," said Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India.

The report, among others, also called for expanding curricula beyond coding to include AI ethics, increasing regional-language offerings, and providing better protections for rural workers, particularly women. Furthermore, the report also recommended strengthening public sector capacity through mandatory, routine AI training to ensure the workforce is prepared for the country's scaling AI ambitions.

The launch event was attended by Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY and Tim Curtis , Director and Representative of the UNESCO Regional Office for South Asia.

Speaking at the launch, Tim Curtis of UNESCO described RAM as the organisation’s flagship diagnostic framework aimed at aligning national AI ecosystems with global ethical principles. He said the India assessment was carried out through a structured, participatory process in partnership with the India AI Mission, bringing together stakeholders from government, academia, industry and civil society.

He added that the report reflects a collective national effort.

MeitY Secretary S Krishnan noted that the framework was the result of nearly 15 months of work and said it would help inform India’s AI policy direction. He highlighted that the India AI Mission has been designed with flexibility to allow course corrections as needed. He also emphasised that the mission’s focus is on creating an enabling environment through partnerships, whether in AI compute, scaling, model development or data infrastructure, rather than relying solely on government intervention.

Speaking at the launch, Sood highlighted that AI brings enormous opportunities, but it also carries profound ethical, social, environmental and human rights implications. "We must ask ourselves two fundamental questions. First, how do we ensure that AI truly serves people and operates under a clear do-no-harm principle? Second, how do we make it fair, trustworthy, inclusive and aligned with constitutional values, human dignity and fundamental freedoms?" he added.