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ENHI

RAS question

What AI development approach does the Economic Survey 2025-26 recommend for India?

Correct answer: (B) Bottom-up approach focused on practical application-led innovation.

The Economic Survey 2025-26 recommends a bottom-up AI development approach for India, centred on practical, application-led innovation rather than frontier-model supremacy.

  1. (A)

    Top-down approach focused on building large frontier AI models

  2. (B)

    Bottom-up approach focused on practical application-led innovation

  3. (C)

    Complete import of foreign AI models with no domestic development

  4. (D)

    Government-only AI development without private sector involvement

Explanation

The Survey frames India’s AI choice as a trade-off between chasing expensive frontier-scale models and using scarce resources for domain-specific systems aligned with domestic priorities. It says Western sector leaders have followed a top-down path built around frontier models, heavy private capital, computing infrastructure and concentrated intellectual property. For India, limited access to cutting-edge compute, scarce finance for large-scale model training and relatively muted private foundational research make that centrepiece difficult. The Survey therefore favours a bottom-up path: distributed innovation across firms and sectors, state coordination, and application-specific AI. It points to practical uses in health, agriculture, education, urban management and disaster preparedness as examples of the problem-driven approach India should scale.

Why the other options are wrong

  • (A) A top-down approach focused on large frontier models is the Western big-tech pattern the Survey contrasts with India’s recommended bottom-up route.
  • (C) Complete import of foreign models is not the Survey’s position; it explicitly warns that passive consumption is the riskiest position and argues for domestic application-led capability.
  • (D) Government-only AI development is too narrow because the Survey describes innovation emerging from start-ups, research institutions, public agencies and domain-specific firms, with state coordination rather than state monopoly.

Concept

This tests technology policy within Indian Economy: how India should allocate scarce capital, compute and institutional capacity in the AI era. It recurs in RAS because the exam often asks the economic rationale behind flagship policy choices, not just the scheme name.

Source

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