On April 13, India created its first centralized AI governance body. The AI Governance and Economic Group, or AIGEG, is supposed to be the "central institutional mechanism" for coordinating the country's AI policy. Chaired by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, it merges recommendations from India's own AI Governance Guidelines and its Economic Survey into a single coordination unit.

There is one glaring problem: the body that is supposed to govern AI in India excluded nearly every regulator that would actually need to enforce the rules.

Who Is Missing

India's own AI governance guidelines, published in November 2025, specifically recommended including independent regulators. The AIGEG ignored that recommendation. Here is who was left out: the Reserve Bank of India (the central bank, which would regulate AI in financial services), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (AI in capital markets), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (AI in communications), the Data Protection Board (which oversees the country's new data privacy law), the Indian Council of Medical Research (AI in healthcare), and the University Grants Commission (AI in education).

Instead, the committee is stacked with government ministers and senior bureaucrats from a handful of ministries: MeitY, the Department of Telecommunications, the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Economic Affairs, NITI Aayog, and the National Security Council.

What This Actually Means

AIGEG is a policy coordination body with no enforcement teeth. The regulators who would actually write and enforce AI rules in banking, healthcare, education, telecom, and data privacy have no seat at the table. A Technology and Policy Expert Committee (TPEC) will provide advisory input, but "advisory" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

This is consistent with the Indian government's stated position: it has repeatedly said it will not regulate AI. The Economic Survey 2025-26 dedicated an entire chapter to AI but focused almost exclusively on adoption and economic growth, not guardrails. MeitY has described its approach as "principles-based" rather than "rules-based," which is the international code for "we will suggest things and hope companies listen."

The Global Context

India is the world's most populous country and one of the fastest-growing AI markets. Its approach matters enormously. Compare what is happening here to the rest of the world: the EU is enforcing AI Act penalties of up to 15 million euros. Britain is spending half a billion pounds on sovereign AI. China has binding rules on AI-generated content, deepfakes, and recommendation algorithms. The US has dozens of federal bills in various stages of going nowhere, but at least 35 states have their own legislation moving.

India, with 1.4 billion people and an exploding AI startup ecosystem, just created a governance body that cannot govern. The regulators who would need to act on AI risks in the sectors where those risks are highest were not invited to the meeting.

It is possible this is Phase 1, and sectoral regulators will be brought in later. It is also possible that this is the whole plan. India may be betting that the best AI governance is no AI governance. Whether that bet pays off depends entirely on whether you think the companies deploying AI in India's banking, healthcare, and education systems will self-regulate.

History suggests they will not.

Sources: Medianama, MeitY Office Memorandum, PIB India, Times of India