New Delhi, May 31 -- Counting is always political. Who gets counted, what gets counted and how it is done are not just technical choices but acts of power. So, when the International Monetary Fund's index places India 71st on AI preparedness while Stanford's index puts it among the top five, the gap is more than a measurement error.

It reflects a difference in their politics.

In India, we have spent decades being assessed by indices designed elsewhere, by people asking questions framed to elicit answers that play to their interests and fashions. The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations' annual State of India's Digital Economy (SIDE) report, now in its fourth edition and extended to 71 countries, is an attempt ...