Teaching in the AI Age

India has been here before.

When the country decided to build Aadhaar, scepticism was widespread. No nation had attempted identity on such a scale, across such diversity, and under such uneven infrastructure. The safer option would have been to copy smaller, proven global systems.

India chose a harder path.

What made Aadhaar transformative was not just its design, but its sustained application over time—accelerated further through the Digital India initiatives. It was imagined from first principles and then patiently embedded into real use cases, at scale, under real constraints. That decision reshaped public service delivery in ways few had anticipated.

India now stands at a similar inflexion point with artificial intelligence in education.

The question before us is not whether AI will enter classrooms. It already has. The more important question is whether India will use AI merely to digitise existing practices, or whether it will once again design from first principles, rooted in its own realities of scale, diversity, and aspiration.

Moving Beyond Catching Up

Much of the global conversation on AI in education is shaped by systems very different from India’s: smaller classrooms, uniform learner profiles, abundant resources, and stable infrastructure. These perspectives are valuable, but they are not universal.

India’s opportunity is not to copy someone else’s model. It is to build approaches native to its own context. When AI is approached as a replication exercise, it risks becoming cosmetic. When it is approached as a problem-solving tool, it can unlock structural change.

AI is not just another technology layer. It is a force multiplier. But force multipliers deliver value only when intent is clear, innovation is central, and use cases are grounded in classroom reality.

Scale as a Strategic Advantage

India’s education system is often described as too large to fix. That framing misses the point.

Scale, when paired with coherence, can become a strength—as India’s IT industry demonstrated over the last three decades. India educates children across languages, geographies, and learning levels that often coexist within the same classroom. This complexity is usually seen as a constraint. It is also a powerful design opportunity.

AI systems shaped by this diversity have the potential to be among the most resilient and adaptable in the world. But that requires origination, not imitation. Solutions must be designed for environments where variability is constant, constraints are normal, and scale is unavoidable.

Public education systems are uniquely positioned to do this work. With the right policy direction, data governance, and institutional alignment, AI can help governments move from episodic interventions to continuous improvement.

Augmenting the Teacher, Not Replacing Them

A central concern in the AI debate is the role of the teacher. Will AI replace human judgment?

The more relevant question is how AI can strengthen it.

When thoughtfully designed, AI can reduce administrative load, surface learning gaps early, and make classroom instruction easier to deliver. If teachers had even 30 per cent more time to teach, learning outcomes would inevitably improve.

Experience shows that outcomes improve not when teachers are told more, but when they are helped more. AI’s most powerful role in education is not automation, but enablement. Used well, it can restore the teacher’s role as a professional decision-maker rather than reduce it to compliance.

Avoiding Superficial Transformation

Every technology wave brings temptation—speed over substance, visibility over value, pilots that look impressive but change little.

AI is no exception.

Sustainable impact comes when systems rethink how the education delivery cycle is organised, how pedagogical decisions are made, and how accountability for learning is structured. Data alone does not create understanding. Value emerges when data is combined with context, innovation, leadership, and intent.

This is where policy leadership matters. Governments have the ability to steer AI away from fragmented experimentation towards outcomes-aligned platforms that compound over time.

This is also where platforms such as the India AI Impact Summit (16–20 February 2026) play an important role—not as showcases of novelty, but as spaces for alignment where leaders can focus on first principles such as equity, scale, and human-centred design. Transformation, after all, is a collective endeavour.

Designing for the Last Child, the Indian Way

If India is to lead differently, one principle must remain central: AI must work for the last child, not just the most connected one.

Equally important, AI must enable teachers, not bypass them. Profit-driven, subscription-led models often sell the dream of a teacher-less classroom. In my experience of working for over a decade in rural education, meaningful learning happens only when teachers inspire it inside classrooms.

India has a rare opportunity to shape AI in education as a force that amplifies human potential rather than replaces it, strengthens public systems, and expands possibilities at scale. We saw this happen in Indian IT; it can happen in education, too.

When the future of education is written, AI should be remembered not for its sophistication, but for the children it helped us finally reach—by making teaching easier, more joyful, and more effective.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is the former CEO of HCL Technologies, Founder and Chairman of Sampark Foundation