
The Workshop
This conclave brought together senior policymakers, regulators, industry leaders, and leading academics from around the world to shape a forward-looking research and policy agenda at the intersection of AI, digital public infrastructure and economic governance. India’s digital infrastructure—Aadhaar, UPI, GSTN, FASTag, and telecom platforms—have generated unprecedented real-time data streams. As multiple panel discussions emphasized, these are transformative for evidence-based policymaking, real-time economic measurement and AI-enabled governance. The central objective of this workshop was to identify three priority research programmes that can unlock these data ecosystems responsibly and productively for national development.
The Panel Explored:
Why AI-DPI
Parisila Perspectives: Episode I: AI-DPI
In the inaugural episode of Parisila Perspectives, NCAER’s new podcast series on macroeconomics and public policy, Suresh Goyal, Director General of NCAER, speaks with Manish Sabharwal, Co-founder of TeamLease Services and Vice Chairman of NCAER, on a defining question for India’s economic future: how can Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) together shape India’s journey to Viksit Bharat 2047?
The wide-ranging conversation cuts a swath across India Stack, UPI, Aadhaar and AI diffusion to productivity, growth, labour markets, skilling, governance, and the future of policy and society. It outlines a new compulsion for India’s unique digital architecture, which must leverage its success with mass inclusion to deliver mass prosperity. Importantly, the two stalwarts make a case for AI-DPI research and its criticality to policy, product development and praxis – a conviction that underpins the launch of NCAER’s new research centre on the economics of AI and DPI.