At the recently concluded India AI Impact Summit 2026, the Prime Minister called for the democratisation of AI, making it a tool for inclusion and empowerment. He added that AI will also open higher-value opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. Further, he underscored that India is not just a part of the AI revolution, but is leading and shaping it.
In this context, we recommend the development of a new technology ecosystem for AI innovation for a Viksit Bharat by 2047, consisting of three elements: 30 new Global Research Universities, supporting 30 new Research Parks that house technology enterprises; all these located in 30 new University Townships or Viksit Bharat Nagars. Together, these will become AI Innovation hubs for a Viksit Bharat.
In a previous essay, 'India must leap to innovation-led growth to withstand global trade shocks, achieve Viksit Bharat Vision', published in ET Government on 8/5/2025, we had highlighted the need to build capacity for innovation:
“The Economic Hurdle is about establishing innovation hubs—clusters with sufficient mass, scale, and scope that foster the synergies required to produce new technologies, processes, and methods (innovation) more efficiently and at lower cost. Such hubs will endow India with a comparative advantage in the 'production of innovation'."
Further, in our essay 'First, citizens: A Viksit Bharat requires every Indian to be a Viksit Bharatiya', we had suggested:
“First and foremost, the jobs must come from the manufacturing sector. This requires a lot of public investment. We suggest that investing in 1,000 to 1,500 Viksit Bharat manufacturing clusters (in all 788 districts) with plug-and-play factory facilities, which accommodate about 200 SMEs every year, will create about four to six million manufacturing jobs annually.”
We argued in that essay that a necessary condition for India to be a developed economy is that every Indian citizen be empowered with skills and access to jobs as a Viksit Bharatiya. AI is likely to have an economy-wide impact on productivity and wages of all citizens by boosting jobs, expanding the organised sector, and increasing the competitiveness of firms, thereby empowering all Indians.
AI creates innovation dynamics
India’s economy has lagged in research and development and the resultant technological advancement due to four legacy factors: low GDP per capita, low export orientation, small firms, and low levels of competition.
To overcome these legacy impediments to technological change, we must invest more in human skills and in research and development. In this context, we note that AI impacts the economy in three important ways that can enhance India’s capacity for human development and technological progress.
First, AI can provide an efficiency boost to human workers, dramatically expanding their production capacity and raising wages. Second, this efficiency impact of AI will have a dramatic deflationary effect on global prices, especially for those products that require information (data) processing and decision-making. The deflationary impact of AI will make many products more affordable for the poor, thereby improving welfare. Third, AI will make invention and discovery easier and faster, thereby expanding frontiers of science and technology at a faster pace, leading to more new products coming to market, more new enterprises and the expansion of new sectors in the economy.
This democratisation of science and invention will impact the market dynamics of innovation. The lowering of barriers to entry in high-technology sectors will open new opportunities for Indian firms to participate in global markets.
These three powerful impacts of AI (the efficiency, deflation, and innovation effects) over the next decade can be best harnessed if our economy can do three things: develop AI products and tools along with the collateral Intellectual Property Rights (IPR’s) wherever we can; deploy AI tools effectively in all sectors of the economy; and develop AI-enabled services for the world whenever we cannot design and make the products.
New technology ecosystem
This focus on AI products, deployment and services would require the development of a new integrated technology ecosystem. Whereas the development of AI products and AI-enabled services are best done at research universities that meet global standards, the research is taken to market by technology enterprises that deploy AI at scale. To facilitate the translation of research into commercial outcomes, each global research university must serve as a central hub, surrounded by research parks that host technology enterprises.
On March 18, 2026, the Government of India announced an allocation of Rs 33,660 crores to develop 100 plug-and-play industrial parks across the country under the Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojana (BHAVYA). The objective of the program is to advance towards Viksit Bharat by 2047 through manufacturing-led growth. We suggest that this excellent initiative can be dovetailed with Global Research Universities and new technology townships (Viksit Bharat Nagars) that we now describe.
Global Research Universities: Research and Development Hubs
Research and development for AI is best conducted at a large university with multiple disciplines, rather than at a specialised technology institute, because AI products and applications integrate knowledge and information from several domains, which require experts from various disciplines to collaborate.
Whereas this does sometimes happen on a corporate campus or at a specialised research institute, a university campus provides the best environment and incentives for AI research.
To develop an ecosystem of enterprises that build new technological applications, we must begin by building a network of research universities that are global in scope, quality, and reach. India needs to build at least 30 Global Research Universities (GRUs), each of which houses at least 20 major disciplines, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), literature, social sciences, and the arts (LSA).
With STEM + LSA, a research university is fully equipped to conduct frontier research that occurs at the boundaries of disciplines. The 30 GRUs, as well as other national institutions of eminence, such as IITs, IIMs, and IISERs, can all serve as hubs of a network of higher education institutions that not only conduct research and development but also impart skills across all disciplines to millions of students, preparing them for the AI age.
GRUs are required immediately, even if India must first adapt and adopt technologies from others for a period of a decade. Once we have built capacity in GRUs to absorb the latest technology across all disciplines by 2036, we can embark on frontier research that will lay the foundations for India to become a leading technologically developed economy by 2047.
We estimate that each GRU will require government investment of about Rs 3,000 crore over a decade, the remaining coming from the private sector. This public investment of Rs 90,000 crore over 10 years will significantly boost R&D in India, encourage private sector investment in R&D, foster synergies with the commercialisation of R&D, and yield benefits that are multiples of the investment.
Technology enterprises
Basic research, which often occurs in universities or public institutions, is taken to market by technology enterprises. India has developed a vibrant start-up ecosystem for IT-enabled enterprises.
The GRU network will enable this nascent enterprise ecosystem to mature and spread across all regions of the country and to nurture technology enterprises in all sectors of the economy: from food and agriculture to healthcare, education, life sciences, aerospace, defence, AI products and AI-enabled services.
The growth of inventions and the resultant patents (intellectual property rights), and the use of these new inventions by technology enterprises are required for India to emerge as a producer of technology services and products, including electronic hardware required for the new AI-enabled global economy.
Manufacturing of new technology products (e.g., AI, Quantum Computing, Robotics, Life Sciences) is essential not only for sustained economic growth but also for managing risks to national security, defence, and natural disasters.
Building such a technology economy requires a New Technology Ecosystem comprising GRUs and domestic Technology Enterprises housed within these 30 Research Parks, contained in modern, sustainable urban habitats (Viksit Bharat Nagars). This new technology ecosystem must be built by the Government of India as a major component of a long-term national strategy to build domestic technological prowess.
Research Parks and Viksit Bharat Nagars
To facilitate the translation of research into commercial activity, every GRU and other R&D Hub needs to be surrounded by research parks that host technology enterprises.
If 30 such research parks are implemented under BHAVYA, each covering an area of 1,500 acres (600 hectares or 6 sq km) with infrastructure investment of Rs 600-700 crore, the total outlay of about Rs 20,000 crore over a decade is achievable, since BHAVYA has already been allocated Rs 33,660 crore by the Government of India. Each research park will require an enterprise incubator or pollinator as a nucleus. This will create a fully integrated ecosystem that enables the scaling up and commercialisation of research.
Over time, a new urban area (new technology city or Viksit Bharat Nagar) will develop around the GRU and Research Park. The development of 30 Viksit Bharat Nagars (VBNs), each covering around 30 sq km with a potential population of 5 lakh, will require an investment of approximately Rs 90,000 crore by the public sector and roughly three times that amount by the private sector over a decade.
This public investment will not only create physical infrastructure but also create interoperable digital public infrastructure that enables private companies to ride on it. APIs and transparent protocols should be set up to enable communication between software (public or private) without interfering with the underlying digital framework. This would be a perfect example of entrepreneurial governance where the government acts as the key enabler for innovation and enterprise and sets the tone for India’s pole position in the AI revolution.
Leading the AI revolution demands resolve, strategy and execution. Consistent with the government's resolve, we have outlined three key components of the strategy for a New Technology Ecosystem for AI, a comprehensive framework comprising Global Research Universities, Technology Enterprises, Research Parks, and Viksit Bharat Nagars.
With this strategy based on government investment of Rs 200,000 crore over a decade, accompanied by building institutions for digital public infrastructure, we can ensure the largest possible multiplier effect of public investment, and are certainly ready to take the opportunity to lead the AI revolution.
(Both authors are former Chief Secretaries of Punjab)
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
