Nasscom says govt's AI guidelines support coordination rather than control

India’s AI governance guidelines prefer coordination over control, setting out an agile, principle-based framework that supports innovation while managing risk through practical, evidence-led tools, the country’s IT industry body Nasscom said.

 

The proposed architecture — comprising the AI Governance Group (AIGG), Technology and Policy Expert Committee (TPEC), and the AI Safety Institute (AISI) — enables effective coordination and a whole-of-government approach without creating an over-centralised regulator, it added.

 

India came out with its AI guidelines earlier this week, proposing an eight-point list of governance principles that address subjects such as transparency, accountability, safety, privacy, fairness, human-centred values, inclusive innovation, and digital-by-design in the AI space.

 

For example, the report has suggested that AI systems being developed in India should be accompanied by meaningful information for users on the development process, capabilities, and limitations of the system.

 

“Across all these themes, alignment is strong. Divergences are limited to scope (the breadth of voluntary commitments), operational detail (how sandboxes and incident routing will function), and sequencing (whether some mechanisms will be federated rather than unified). These are matters of implementation rather than philosophy,” Nasscom said in a statement.

 

It also proposed enabling a single reporting interface that routes across privacy, cybersecurity, and safety mechanisms, developing clearer conformance pathways for voluntary commitments, and designing a concrete programme plan for regulatory sandboxes and tool-building under AISI and TPEC.