NITI Aayog Decides Indexing to Rank Indian States Based on AI Adoption

The government body NITI Aayog is planning to develop an 'AI Readiness Index' which will rank the Indian states as per their capacity to adopt artificial intelligence either for public delivery or to operate over its innovative potentials.

Earlier the government think tank had successfully rolled out health, education, water composite index, and agriculture index in the past few years. The AI index will be one of few indices that would fall in its second term.

A senior government official quoted, "the Aayog has been aggressively pushing for adoption of AI and it is natural that the outcome of states' initiatives on AI is assessed. Hence, the need for an index adding that the parameters to rank states could be finalized in some time."

NITI Aayog has been marching towards monitoring states based on outcomes. The government body has ranked states in the past based on social indicators in order to promote competitive and cooperative federalism.

The official further stated, "While the Aayog is yet to decide on the indices to measure the states' performance, some of the likely parameters could include digital skills, innovation capabilities, and existing data capabilities and management in each state. The index is likely to even identify challenges for each state in the adoption of AI and recommend possible areas of improvement for every state."

The Aayog has lodged that India invests in Rs 7500 crore initially over the time span of three years and also focuses on the establishment of a high-level task force to supervise the AI rolling out process in the country.

According to the estimations it can be said that artificial intelligence has the potential to add $957 billion to the Indian economy by 2035 and accelerate its annual growth by 1.3%. These figures clearly justify the early adoption and government's keen interest and initiative in AI.

Amitabh Kant, the NITI Aayog CEO, has already written a proposal to states and ministries and requested to identify major projects across 5 industries where AI can be adopted.

In the budget 2018-19, the government had entrusted NITI Aayog with the charge of developing a national programme based on AI. After this, the national AI strategy of India got released in June.