Opinion | India's Opening: What New Delhi Can Actually Do In UN's AI Dialogue

Updated: Jul 12, 2026 12:26 pm IST Published On Jul 12, 2026 12:25 pm IST Last Updated On Jul 12, 2026 12:26 pm IST

Published On Jul 12, 2026 12:25 pm IST

Last Updated On Jul 12, 2026 12:26 pm IST

The inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance was held in Geneva on 6-7 July and India was represented by the Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh. Mandated by UN General Assembly resolution 79/325 and rooted in the Global Digital Compact agreed at the 2024 Summit of the Future, the Dialogue was deliberately chaired by two small states - Ambassador Egriselda López of El Salvador and Ambassador Rein Tammsaar of Estonia rather than by any AI superpower.

India arrived as a state that had, five months earlier, hosted the largest AI gathering yet held anywhere - the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, which drew more than twenty heads of government and participants from over a hundred countries. The UN's new Dialogue, mandated by General Assembly resolution 79/325 and modelled on the non-binding Internet Governance Forum, hands every nation a seat but no gavel. Its currency is influence, not enforcement and influence is precisely the resource India has spent the past two years accumulating.

India's claim to shape global AI rules rests on something few developing economies possess: a working, at-scale demonstration that AI can be built for public purpose rather than private capture. Its Digital Public Infrastructure - Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker, the BHASHINI language stack already reaches hundreds of millions, and AI is now layered onto it in concrete ways,........

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