By Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Founder, Naukri.com

Co-Founder, Info Edge

 

India has always been a country where big breakthroughs come from solving real, everyday problems. When we built Naukri.com in the mid-1990s, the internet was new, and technology adoption was still at an early stage. But the need we were addressing—helping people find jobs—was universal. We succeeded not because of the technology alone, but because technology met a genuine, widespread public need.

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Artificial Intelligence today stands at a similar inflection point. And if there is one place where AI can create the greatest and most equitable impact, it is inside the Indian State—within our public administration. India is on the path to becoming the AI use-case capital of the world, not because we adopt technology first, but because we need it the most.

 

The central idea here is simple. To truly change India with AI, we must focus on public service. When our bureaucracy uses AI effectively, it can deliver tangible improvements to the lives of all citizens We already see early signs of this.

AI can help cities become safer by supporting predictive policing and faster investigations.

AI can extend healthcare into the remotest corners of the country, compensating for our doctor-to-population imbalance.

AI can help improve tax collection, reduce fraud, support compliance, and increase transparency.

AI can make our cities smarter—in traffic, transport, utilities, waste management, and public infrastructure.

And perhaps most importantly, AI can uplift our farmers by improving crop planning, forecasting weather, detecting plant diseases early, and enabling rural credit through better data.

 

The impact is broad, deep, and inclusive. This is what true democratization of AI looks like—technology reaching not just the affluent or urban citizen, but every Indian, regardless of geography or income. But none of this happens automatically. It requires vision.It requires leadership. And it requires India’s administrators—our IAS officers, district collectors, police leadership, health officials, municipal teams, and rural development departments—to embrace AI as a partner in delivery.

 

This book lays out a practical and thoughtful blueprint for that journey. It brings clarity to complex topics, grounding them in real use cases and real outcomes. And above all, it places the Indian citizen at the centre of the conversation. That, to me, is the book’s greatest strength.

 

India has always had the talent. We have built global technology companies, world-class products, and some of the most innovative digital public infrastructure anywhere—Aadhaar, UPI, FASTag, ONDC. The next leap will come when this capacity is applied deeply and systematically across public administration. I believe the ideas in this book arrive at the right moment. I congratulate the authors for taking on this important subject and presenting it with clarity, purpose, and vision. This book deserves to be read widely—by policymakers, bureaucrats, technologists, entrepreneurs, and young Indians who will live in the future it describes.

 

The next decade can be India’s decade.

AI, applied with wisdom and scale, can help make it so.