Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho, has been calling for Indians to work in native languages, claiming India’s talent, including in tech, is held back by linguistic barriers. “95 per cent of Indians are not fluent in English,” he states. The case for linguistic confidence has merit, but Vembu’s myopic argument stems from nationalistic sentiment rather than the path to opportunity. An innovator is gate-keeping AI’s capacity to immediately and affordably overcome all language challenges.
When leaders with the means to effect on-ground change tell students they don’t need to learn English or gain foreign degrees, they omit to mention that both are what got them a seat at the negotiating table of the $4.9 trillion global tech industry. It is not that our students have an inherent inability to learn, but that our techno-educational pipeline cannot teach them. They have not been provided with credible, available, and meritorious learning opportunities.
In the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (which tests & ranks global education systems), India ranked 72nd out of 73. By boycotting subsequent assessments, we abdicated accountability that undermines showy calls for AI-driven reform. Claiming students don’t need the positioning resurrects feudal structures that keep the oppressed reliant on those who do have the currency and negotiability of a global lingua franca.
India faces a staggering teacher shortage of approximately 1.5 million educators, leading to overcrowded classrooms; 1.2 lakh schools operate with a single teacher, 89 per cent located in rural areas. Tech leaders citing China’s linguistic nationalism forget it has a single script with idiomatic dialect variations. Government-funded scholarships enable their students to conduct research overseas and repatriate their learnings. India has 780 languages and 68 scripts. China has over $1 billion invested in AI education, with 99 per cent of Chinese university faculty and students now using AI tools, 60 per cent frequently. Through the USA’s robust public library system, internet access, laptops, sometimes even MacBooks, are made accessible. Instead of enabling such innovations, our techbros are caught in nationalistic debates rich with excuses.
Today, what matters more than anything is how we leverage AI immediately. India’s Sarvam AI models process code-mixed content in 10 languages with 97 per cent accuracy, including the open-source Shuka v1 audio model. Its content can reflect real-world Indian language usage, handle complex educational terminology, and run efficiently on edge devices, including smartphones. Sarvam is already tasked with building India’s sovereign foundational model under the IndiaAI Mission. Organisations like Rocket Learning are already using AI in childhood education, with 75 per cent of children becoming school-ready, while the AICTE’s “Anuvadini” tool supports 22 regional languages.
Such progress removes needless linguistic divisiveness. Integrating multiple emergent open-access agentic technologies can transform our education systems overnight with political will and industry focus. There is no longer any excuse for not implementing widespread education reform. From public information messaging to highly specialised technical education, it is possible to customise lessons, automate recursive testing, standardise grading and disseminate it widely. All any village in India needs is electricity, wifi and a smartphone.
Regionality is a cocoon of caste and class divisions. AI disrupts this. Real-time translation capabilities offer learners multilingual capacity, and the artificial scarcity of access disappears. Just as English historically offered a neutral modality, thousands of Indians took to the binary coding language precisely because it enabled them to adopt a vocabulary that was mathematically impersonal and logically freeing. Such neutrality is what enables unprecedented social mobility. India needs hypermobility, not hyperregionality. We need to eliminate the false choice between cultural authenticity and educational advancement. AI-powered Intelligent Interactive Teaching Systems (IITS) can personalise learning, generate educational content, and eliminate knowledge gaps dynamically.
UNICEF India’s research confirms that AI-powered tools can adapt to each child’s pace regardless of linguistic background. Unlike human teachers, AI systems can also work 24/7 and reach remote villages with a consistent quality for India’s 1.5 million schools. While 60 per cent of school children in India cannot access online learning, mobile penetration is fast-paced: 58 per cent of higher-class students have smartphone access. This creates the opportunity for leapfrogging traditional educational infrastructure.
The National Education Policy 2020 explicitly calls for AI integration at all educational levels. What we lack is the urgency to deploy at scale, and what we are getting are excuses galore.
India can chuck the outdated Government-school model and switch to a digital library model. Equipped with internet and wifi, students of all ages can teach themselves with pre-loaded modules. An 80-year-old housewife, a 40-year-old farmer or a 20-year-old mechanic can go back to “school” at any time of day and grab opportunities they never had. AI can provide feedback in real-time, freeing limited human teachers to mentor.
India’s youth don’t need to be told what they don’t need to learn or be advised to stay in their villages by those who had the choices to learn, leave, grow, and return. The power brokers who gained influence through access to knowledge don’t get to construct barriers to prevent others from following suit.
Critics cite infrastructure, data privacy, and implementation challenges. These are the problems to solve while deploying, not reasons to delay deployment. The question is no longer whether AI will transform Indian education, but whether we will act swiftly enough to push enough of our populace through on the momentum of this age, before they get left behind.
Das is a Mysuru-based author, therapist, independent AI researcher & co-founder of Project Shunyata, a group that examines AI through the lens of Buddhist Philosophy
