Dilip Kumar@kmr_dilip
I'm convinced India will never be able to compete with the US and China in technology if we keep treating it as a spectacle.
A bunch of influential folks are organising, Asia’s “largest AI event” in Mumbai later this month, and the speaker lineup has Bollywood celebrities, cricketers, and YouTube influencers. These are people who haven't written a single line of code in their lives.
A country doesn't become a technology leader through celebrity endorsements or political speeches. India will never be a technology powerhouse if we parade technology as an accessory. Real AI innovation doesn’t come from celebrity panels—it comes from builders. PhDs, engineers, founders—people who write code, build models, and deploy systems at scale.
The US and China didn’t lead in AI because of influencer summits. They did it through university labs, open-source contributions, and startup founders building from first principles. We need to build an ecosystem to listen and learn from builders.
Technology isn’t a spectator sport. If India wants to lead, we must put real builders at the center of the conversation.
