Daily Briefing Current Affairs

Hosting Is Not Capability: India's AI Incentives Must Come With Conditions

The Pant-Rahul column of 23-24 October 2026 questions the value of India's tax incentives for foreign cloud providers, introduced in the 2026-27 Budget, as States compete to host AI data centres and the IndiaAI Mission expands public compute. Economists Manoj Pant and M Rahul published an opinion piece warning that India's AI strategy is overly reliant on hosting foreign data centres without securing high-value domestic…