The New Delhi Code: How India Is Writing the Rules for Inclusive AI
![flat color political map, clean cartographic style, muted earth tones, no 3D effects, geographic clarity, professional map illustration, minimal ornamentation, clear typography, restrained color coding, flat 2D political map of South Asia, clean vector lines with muted earth-tone regions, subtle gradient highlighting India at the center, thin hand-drawn annotation lines extending from cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, and Raipur toward an upward-curving arc labeled 'New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments', soft directional light from above-left casting faint ink-line shadows, atmosphere of quiet authorship and deliberate recentering [Nano Banana]](https://081x4rbriqin1aej.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/viral-images/6e08a39b-37ac-4e02-bf74-2a5d1fc60911_viral_1_square.png "flat color political map, clean cartographic style, muted earth tones, no 3D effects, geographic clarity, professional map illustration, minimal ornamentation, clear typography, restrained color coding, flat 2D political map of South Asia, clean vector lines with muted earth-tone regions, subtle gradient highlighting India at the center, thin hand-drawn annotation lines extending from cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, and Raipur toward an upward-curving arc labeled 'New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments', soft directional light from above-left casting faint ink-line shadows, atmosphere of quiet authorship and deliberate recentering [Nano Banana]")
Historical precedents suggest that when technological leadership shifts, normative frameworks emerge first as voluntary commitments—Bandung, Kyoto, Proálcool—before crystallizing into enduring structures. The New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments appear to follow this arc.
What if the future of AI isn’t written in Palo Alto or Beijing—but in the polyglot classrooms of Chennai, the rural clinics of Chhattisgarh, and the startup labs of Bengaluru? The ‘New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments’ are not merely policy statements—they are the opening lines of a new chapter in technological sovereignty, where the Global South refuses to be an afterthought in the AI age. This moment recalls the 1960s, when countries like India and Ghana championed scientific self-reliance not as isolationism, but as a demand for epistemic equity—the right to shape knowledge systems that affect their people [1]. Just as the Green Revolution was as much about seed sovereignty as yield increases, today’s AI revolution is about data dignity and algorithmic accountability in local contexts. The fact that global AI firms have agreed to participate—not under coercion, but through consensus—suggests a tectonic shift: legitimacy in technology governance is no longer derived solely from innovation speed, but from inclusion depth. History shows that norm-setting moments like this—Bandung, Kyoto, Paris—often begin with voluntary pledges that later crystallize into binding norms [2]. If this trajectory holds, the New Delhi Commitments may one day be seen not as a footnote, but as the foundation stone of a truly global AI ethic—one that remembers the farmer, the nurse, and the small trader in its code.
—Sir Edward Pemberton
Published February 21, 2026