India's AI to be inclusive by design, sovereign by capability: Dharmendra Pradhan

New Delhi: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday said India's Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be inclusive by design, interoperable by architecture and sovereign by capability.

The minister made the comments at the inaugural session of Bharat Bodhan AI Conclave 2026 here. The two-day conclave will bring together senior policymakers from the Centre and the states, researchers, academic institutions and industry leaders to deliberate on AI's strategic role in transforming India's education ecosystem, with a focus on innovation, scalable adoption and national capacity building.

"India's AI will be inclusive by design, interoperable by architecture and sovereign by capability. We have to embed AI in education to empower our students and support our teachers.

"I call upon all the stakeholders to build scalable, responsible, ethical, inclusive and India-centric sovereign AI models for transforming our education and realising the goal of Viksit Bharat," Pradhan said.

"There are 30 crore students in Indian campuses. We have decided that beginning from Class 3 till the advanced research stage, we will impart age-appropriate knowledge about AI," he said.

The Bharat Bodhan AI Conclave 2026 is envisioned as a national platform for landscape discovery, strategic alignment and partnership building in AI-enabled education.

"Its primary purpose is to mark the beginning of the development of the Bharat EduAI Stack, an open and interoperable architecture to build, integrate and scale AI-powered learning solutions across India besides enabling landscape discovery and ecosystem mapping to identify gaps and opportunities," he said.

The minister noted that AI is a horizontal issue and not just a subject of technology.

"I believe that all students will require AI. If we make a model combining machines and emotions and build an architecture, then we can be a strength of the world," he said.

The conclave will engage solutions across four priority verticals -- AI for School Education, AI for Higher Education, AI for Skilling and Workforce Readiness, and AI Research and Deep Technology.

An exhibition showcasing AI-driven innovations in school education, higher education and skilling was also inaugurated, providing a platform for interaction between policymakers and innovators.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between IIT Bombay and Columbia University to establish a Centre of AI for manufacturing at IIT Bombay, besides the launch of the three new courses on AI by IIM Lucknow, institutional collaborations involving IIM Jammu and AIT Bangkok and an IIM Ranchi Initiative called "Teaching with AI".

The Bharat Bodhan AI Conclave precedes the larger India AI Summit scheduled to be held in the national capital from February 16 to 20. The summit is expected to see participation from global tech leaders in the likes of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.