AI governance: The summit stage is necessary but it isn’t sufficient

TEN years ago, a street vendor in Mumbai could not open a bank account. No address, no papers and no access. Today, that same vendor accepts digital payments on her phone, instantly, for free, from anywhere in the country.

That is a civilisation story as much as a technology story – one that India built, at scale, through deliberate sovereign choice.

French President Emmanuel Macron told that story at the India AI Impact Summit at New Delhi in February. He told it because it captures something essential about what the event represented: a demonstration that the Global South can shape the rules of the game, rather than inherit them.