When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her ninth consecutive Union Budget, artificial intelligence was not positioned as a startup opportunity or a disruptive frontier. Instead, AI appeared repeatedly as an enabling layer inside governance systems, sectoral platforms, and public service delivery. Across agriculture, employment, education, customs, accessibility, and administration, the Union Budget 2026 framed AI as part of the Indian state’s operating machinery. “Cutting-edge technologies, including AI applications, can serve as force multipliers for better governance,” Sitharaman said. “Adoption of technology is for the benefit of all people – farmers in the field, women in STEM, youth keen to upskill and Divyangjan to access newer opportunities,” Sitharaman added in her Budget 2026 speech. For startups building and funding AI companies, however, this raises a more uncomfortable question: where does private innovation sit when AI is designed first as a governance tool? Where AI Shows Up Clearly: Platforms, Risk, And Service Delivery The clearest AI deployments announced in Budget 2026 are concentrated within government platforms. In agriculture, the government proposed Bharat VISTAAR, a multilingual AI platform integrating AgriStack portals with ICAR’s agricultural practice data. The platform is intended to improve productivity, reduce risk, and offer customised advisory support to farmers. AI… Read MoreInc42 Media
