Navigating the AI Duopoly: India’s Quest for Digital Sovereignty and Algorithmic Governance in a US–China Dominated Global Order..
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Abstract
Capability in advanced artificial intelligence (AI) has been centralized in the United States and China(Leech et al., 2024), creating an extremely uneven distribution of power across the globe, which is just as important as a country's military or economic power in determining its political agency, with access to foundational models, semiconductor supply chains, and large-scale training data serving as a key determinant. The problem is not just a technical one for states outside the duopoly, but one of sovereignty. This paper explores the unique trajectory being taken by the world's most populous democracy and its rapidly growing digital economy in the face of an increasingly polarized AI landscape. The study, which uses qualitative policy analysis tools, suggests that structurally India is strong enough to stop being subjugated by technology but not robust enough to be algorithmically self-sufficient, given the current state of its governance structures, from 2018's National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence to the IndiaAI Mission(Chahal et al., 2021) and the India AI Governance Guidelines written in November 2025. The Indian approach to diplomacy, exemplified at the India AI Impact Summit in February 2026 in New Delhi, is an intentional shift in the global discussion of AI governance to put development equity and human-centric priorities at the heart of the discussion. India's principled non-alignment, thus, manifests in a digital manner, by involving both Washington and Beijing simultaneously while advancing a third path alternative for the Global South. However, significant issues are still not resolved: there is a significant leaning towards voluntary corporate compliance, foundational model capacity is still developing and stated data-sovereignty aspirations do not easily fit with substantial reliance on the external cloud infrastructure. The paper argues that the trajectory of algorithmic governance is more a diplomatic negotiation than a policy stance in India and is as much a result of internal institutional fragmentation as it is of power dynamics with the outside world.....
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