Govt working to upskill, reskill IT workforce amid AI challenges: Vaishnaw

Vaishnaw said the Prime Minister has always shown commitment towards clean energy, and India at present has more than 50 per cent of the power generation capacity from the clean sources

The government is aware of the challenges that the Indian IT industry is facing due to artificial intelligence and is working with academia to upskill and reskill talents, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.

During his welcome address at the inaugural session of India AI impact Summit 2026, Vaishnaw said that the Prime Minister, in the Union Budget, has announced a very big policy shift aimed at attracting world's data to India, to reside in India, to be processed here and to deliver high-value services to the world.

"We are also conscious of the challenges which are facing our IT industry and to mitigate it we are working with the industry and academia to upskill, reskill and to build a new talent pipeline for this new intelligence age," Vaishnaw said.

 

He said the Prime Minister has always shown commitment towards clean energy, and India at present has more than 50 per cent of the power generation capacity from the clean sources.

"Our visionary Prime Minister has recently reformed the nuclear energy sector also, which is another very good sector for providing that base load of clean energy. We have a robust grid which has been practically rebuilt over the last one decade," Vaishnaw said.

Frontier AI companies, along with India's own innovators, have committed to advancing understanding of real-world AI usage to support policies on various issues, including jobs, with multilingual and contextual evaluations under the 'New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments', IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.

 

Announcing the outcome of India AI Impact Summit here, he said under the 'New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments', "leading frontier AI companies, along with India's own innovators such as Sarvam, Bharatjan, Yani and Soket, have come together to make a set of voluntary commitments that reflect a shared vision for inclusive and responsible AI".

 

"This initiative positions India at the forefront of building a Global South-led perspective on AI governance, one that balances innovation with equity and real-world impact," the minister said.

 

Under the pledge, the companies have made "two significant commitments", he added.

 

First is "advancing understanding of real-world AI usage through anonymised and aggregated insights to support evidence-based policy making on jobs, skills and economic transformation," Vaishnaw said.

 

"The second is strengthening multilingual and contextual evaluations of AI systems to ensure that AI works effectively across languages, cultures and real-world use cases, especially in the Global South," he added.

 

Together, these efforts mark an important step towards shaping AI that is not only powerful, but also inclusive, development-oriented and globally relevant, he added.