AI Readiness: Preparing and aspiring youth for vibrant Viksit Bharat
AI: Industry ready India — a case study
AI readiness is the mantra for youth in the present digital decade. AI has redefined every walk of day-to-day life. AI has been integrated into everyday activities — Health fit through smart wearables, Healthcare through AI based drug discovery, Horticulture through precession intelligent farming, home and office automation, home care for elderly citizens, Health monitoring of vehicles through predictive analytics.
AI is simply a black box which could be decoded for decision making process through data analytics. The launch of BharatGen AI and Bhashini has filled the gap of multilingual barrier and enhanced the rich cultural heritage across Indian humanity. India has transformed conventional manufacturing plants into smart e-factories like bajaj silent factory in Pune, Havel’s Llyod factory in Rajasthan, Colgate Palmolive in Gujarat which adapted the best practices of Human-Machine interactions like collaborative robots (COBOTS), Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), Telepresence robots thereby enabling not only real time monitoring of process flow and quality control but also enhancing workers safety as well.
AI has revolutionised the livelihoods of artisans and crafts especially the AI based Indian carpet design has added values to rural economy and enhanced the supply chain of rural products in various e-commerce platforms. India achieved the second largest contributor to GitHub AI projects with 19.9 per cent worldwide (Source: GitHub, 2024 | Chart: 2025 AI Index report). AI has redefined the employment matrices across the globe leading to revolutionizing the various job roles which could be a machine learning engineer, robotic engineer, data analyst, and AI engineer.
SOAR — AI readiness initiative: youth centric
SOAR — Skilling for AI Readiness is a nation building mission transforming India’s educational landscape through reskilling and upskilling the youth to meet the skilling objectives, research, and market challenges. SOAR - A skill India mission initiated through Skill India Digital Hub is a youth centric AI literacy program empowering youth towards AI skill competency and thereby build social inclusion as well. SOAR enables youth, especially the students from schools and undergraduates in higher educational institutions and Universities, employees from professional organisation, entrepreneurs, innovators to readily access AI learning tools and techniques through virtual modes.
SOAR is flexible and more objective aimed at and aligned with National Educational Policy 2020 to develop a comprehensive approach through firsthand learning and practices. SOAR forms the building block for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat and paves the way for AI awareness, lifelong learning and makes the youth to prepare against the rapid changes and challenges in the job market.
AI digital public infrastructure for Viksit Bharat
India is smartly investing on building Digital Public Infrastructures such as the Data Centres and Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence thereby driving our nation towards Amrit Kaal. AI is slowly, steadily, and seamlessly integrated into classroom teaching by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) through adapting best practices of a strong learning framework such as experiential learning and project-based learning.
AI Skill Mission
AI is being integrated into skill India initiatives such as Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana 4.0, National Apprenticeship Embedded Degree program, Craftsman Training through Industrial Training Institute (ITIs) and National Training Institutes. SOAR forms the cornerstone for different stakeholders,
especially the student innovators to transform from their classroom to laboratory to chiplets through focused problem solving, critical thinking and curiosity-based learning.
The pioneering initiatives such as India AI Thinkpreneurs, Smart India Hackathon, World Skill competition, Inspire Manak, Idex Defence Innovation challenge has developed smart thing among youth thereby develop customized solutions. AI is no longer an Algorithm in computer. It’s transforming variety of problem statement in India into idea to prototype to product leading to increase the value of Lab to Market.
AI Way forward 2026
India is making a big and bold moves in 2026 through the launch of AI Impact Summit which onboard students, educators, innovators, industry practitioners, and entrepreneurs across the globe.
Writer is a head institute industry interface program Hindustan College of Science and Technology, Mathura; views are personal
