Published Mar 13, 2026 | 4:00 PM ⚊ Updated Mar 13, 2026 | 4:00 PM
Data, computing power, and technical expertise are organised through global networks where a few corps and countries hold disproportionate influence.
Synopsis: The recent AI Summit in New Delhi felt less like a routine policy conference and more like an AI mela where ambition, politics, and public debate met. Looking at it through the lens of India’s postcolonial experience helps us see how display, dependence, and development remain closely linked in the data economy.
The most striking moments of the AI Impact Summit – 2026 at Bharat Mandapam were not the technical sessions, but images.
The Prime Minister holding hands with global technology leaders in a carefully staged gesture of partnership; young opposition activists trying to protest outside the venue; the widely discussed robodog demonstration that quickly turned into a controversy online. Grandeur and discomfort, celebration and criticism, appeared together. That mixture captures how power is performed and contested in the postcolonial condition.
Calling the summit an AI mela is not meant to diminish it. In South Asia, a mela is a lively gathering where commerce, politics, and aspirations converge. The summit had that quality.
Polished AI stalls, multilingual chatbots, startup displays, and diplomatic speeches created a sense that India had arrived at the centre of the global AI conversation. India was not just participating. It was hosting the stage.
But melas are also spaces of display. In the nineteenth century, colonial exhibitions placed colonised regions on show as sources of labour and resources. They turned territories and cultures into objects to be catalogued and managed. Today’s AI summits are obviously different, yet there is a faint echo of that earlier logic. Countries present their datasets, digital infrastructure, and population scale as strengths in the global data economy.
India’s population becomes a source of training data. Its many languages offer opportunities for
localisation. Its digital public systems become examples of efficiency and scale.
India’s AI ambitions must be read alongside a familiar postcolonial reality that colonialism was not only about political rule. It was also about reorganising knowledge and resources for distant centres of power. Artificial intelligence does something similar in a new form.
Data, computing power, and technical expertise are organised through global networks where a few corporations and countries still hold disproportionate influence. Cloud services, advanced
chips, and foundational models are largely controlled outside India.
This underscores the importance of reading the summit’s confident tone alongside these realities. When global firms speak of unlocking India’s data potential, the key question is where the gains will finally rest. Data labelling and other forms of digital labour may happen locally, but ownership of models and large-scale computing often lies elsewhere. Many Indian startups innovate creatively, yet they frequently rely on foreign-owned platforms and tools. Display does not mean control.
The mela comparison helps here. A mela can be festive, but it is also about transactions and hierarchy. Who stands at the centre and who remains at the edges still matters. The ‘hand-holding’ photographs suggest equality, but they do not necessarily settle questions of bargaining power.
The summit was not free from disagreement. The presence of youth protesters, even briefly, was a reminder that technology policy affects citizens, not just leaders and executives. The Chinese ‘robodog’ episode also sparked debate about authenticity. Such moments complicate the smooth story of technological progress.
If the AI mela is to be more than an impressive display, participation has to widen. Artificial intelligence influences jobs, welfare systems, media, and everyday communication. Decisions about its development cannot remain limited to closed-door meetings. A grounded postcolonial approach asks simple but important questions. Who helps build the datasets?
Which languages and communities receive attention? Who carries the burden when automated systems make mistakes?
India’s effort to position itself as a voice of the Global South in AI governance is noteworthy.
For a long time, technology standards were shaped mainly in Euro-American settings. Hosting the summit signals an ambition to change that. Yet real solidarity requires more than symbolic leadership. It calls for attention to unequal access to computing power, the concentration of intellectual property, and the risk of new forms of digital extraction.
The postcolonial experience is visible in the mix of pride, tension, and debate that marked the summit. The AI mela at Bharat Mandapam brought together aspiration and uncertainty in
equal measure.
In the end, what matters is what follows. Will India strengthen public research institutions, encourage transparent AI development, and protect digital workers? Will AI tools in Indian languages involve communities in meaningful ways? Will policy frameworks seriously address social and regional inequalities in digital access?
If the AI mela leads to broader oversight and fairer distribution of technological capacity, it could mark an important step forward. If it remains mainly a carefully managed display, it may resemble earlier exhibitions where promise and dependence coexisted. The real test lies not in the spectacle, but in the institutions built once the gathering is over.
(Views expressed are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
