India, Aug. 15 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi used his Independence Day address on Saturday to put a one-year timeframe around one of India's biggest AI-skilling ambitions: providing Artificial Intelligence training to one crore young Indians.

But viewed alongside his references to semiconductors, data centres, research funding and energy security, the announcement points to a larger technology agenda. India's AI ambitions are increasingly being framed not simply around models or applications, but around the stack required to build and run them-talent, compute, data, chips, infrastructure and power.

Addressing the nation from the Red Fort on India's 80th Independence Day, Modi said the government had resolved to provide AI skill traini...