Boston/Bengaluru: India's growth story has often relied on alignment between society, state and market. Public infrastructure, private innovation and social needs have advanced together in this mixed-economy model. In AI, that has meant shared compute, open datasets and a deliberate effort to keep access affordable. At its core is a democratic instinct: the belief that AI should work for everyone.
But AI infrastructure is not abstract. It's physical, resource-intensive and tied to local ecosystems. This raises the question: what happens when this rapid expansion collides with a country facing severe water stress?
