At BS Manthan 2026, leaders debate AI, trade and India's future readiness

At BS Manthan 2026, ministers, industry leaders and policy experts debated AI, trade, demographics and sustainability as India navigates geopolitical shifts and prepares for a tech-driven future

Trade, tariff and technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), dominated the conversations at India’s premier thought leadership summit Business Standard Manthan 2026 on the inaugural day on Tuesday.

 

The two-day summit being held in New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam focused on the theme Making India Future Ready, covering areas such as artificial intelligence, the demographic dividend, as well as infrastructure and agriculture. 

The summit of thought leaders saw top minds from government, policy and industry come together to deliberate on a range of subjects, among them the impact of AI on markets, reimagining the FMCG space, new realities of the farm sector, electric mobility, scaling up Industry 5.0 and India’s Free Trade Agreement (FTA) journey. 

An array of speakers — from top ministers and market specialists to policy experts and industry leaders — highlighted India’s challenges against a rapidly evolving geopolitical as well as technological scenario. That no country has become developed without engaging with the world was an important statement from Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, who stressed that India was an oasis providing tremendous confidence to the world. Goyal said that trade talks with the US would resume “as soon as the situation became clear.”

 

While Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan talked about food security, FTAs and livelihood opportunities, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari brought road safety through better engineering, education and enforcement into focus.

 

A common thread that ran through the discussions — whether it was the FMCG behemoth ITC Limited or new-age companies like Ather Energy — was technology and the diversity of India, which makes it a huge domestic market. A glimpse into the future of manufacturing and automation in Industry 5.0, which is all about blending technology with human ingenuity to create globally competitive, future-ready enterprises, also came through in the conversations.

 

The panel discussion on data centres — huge power guzzlers known to consume vast amounts of clean water for cooling — revolved around the question and concern of sustainability. India, said the panellists, has had the advantage of entering the data centre ecosystem relatively late, enabling the country to adopt the latest technologies and methods such as wind rather than water cooling. The energy shift towards renewables also took centre stage at the discussion.