In a pointed critique during Thursday’s Rajya Sabha session, AAP parliamentarian Raghav Chadha dissected the primary impediment to India’s soaring AI aspirations: a dire shortage of GPUs. Dismissing notions of capital or skill deficits, he zeroed in on computational resources as the Achilles’ heel.
The MP detailed the mounting pressures from skyrocketing GPU costs and snarled international supply chains, which are severely hampering data center growth and the development of advanced AI frameworks. India’s arsenal of approximately 34,000 GPUs, he argued, is woefully inadequate for competing in the global AI race.
Chadha directed probing questions to the Science and Technology Ministry via the Chair, inquiring about concrete targets, deadlines, and international maneuvers to guarantee steady GPU inflows.
Minister Jitendra Singh, in his rebuttal, validated the concern, terming GPU availability a pivotal global issue at the heart of AI progress. He outlined the India AI Mission’s strategic focus on ‘Compute’ as a core component, facilitating subsidized access—up to 40% off—to premium computing from empaneled vendors.
Further, the government is arranging extra compute capacity for massive models with 30B or 65B parameters from diverse sources. Singh highlighted recent incentives for private players, marked by yesterday’s inaugural call for project proposals.
‘We’re fully alert and advancing solutions aggressively,’ the minister assured, vowing that India will match international benchmarks without compromising its AI supremacy goals. This exchange underscores the high stakes: with AI poised to redefine economies, securing hardware muscle is paramount for India’s digital leapfrog.
