ISB Governance Summit 2026
Governance Summit 2026
- Overview
- About Governance Summit
- Registration Details
- Framing Inclusive AI
- Vision of Governance Summit 2026
- Priority Areas for Action
- AI Exhibition
- Participation and Selection
- Contact Us
Governance Summit 2026
The Inclusive AI for Viksit Bharat – Governance Summit 2026, convened by the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP), ISB, is designed as an implementation-focused platform. It aims to bring together policymakers, practitioners, innovators, and researchers to examine how AI can deliver equitable and scalable outcomes across sectors that are central to India’s development trajectory.
| Date | May 23, 2026 |
| Location | Mohali Campus |
About Governance Summit
Artificial Intelligence is emerging as a foundational layer of modern economies and governance systems. Its influence now extends across financial systems, labour markets, healthcare delivery, digital platforms, and public administration. For a country like India- characterised by scale, diversity, and developmental heterogeneity- AI presents both a transformative opportunity and a complex governance challenge.
India’s experience with digital public infrastructure has demonstrated that technology, when designed with inclusion at its core, can expand access, improve efficiency, and enable state capacity at scale. The next phase of this transformation lies in the effective integration of AI into these systems. However, unlike earlier digital interventions, AI systems are adaptive, data-intensive, and often opaque, raising important concerns around equity, accountability, safety, and long-term societal impact.
In this context, the central policy question is not whether AI should be adopted, but how it can be governed and deployed in ways that are inclusive, responsible, and aligned with India’s development priorities.
Registration Details
"Early Bird Registration till 30th April". Please register at the earliest to be a part of Governance Summit 2026!
Framing Inclusive AI
Inclusive AI goes beyond access to technology. It encompasses the design, deployment, and governance of AI systems in ways that:
- Enable broad-based participation across socio-economic groups
- Protect individuals and communities from systemic risks and harms
- Address structural inequalities rather than reinforcing them
- Ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability in automated systems
- Deliver tangible improvements in well-being and economic opportunity
Achieving this requires moving from a technology-centric lens to a systems and governance perspective, where AI is embedded within institutional, regulatory, and social contexts.
The discourse on inclusive AI in India must engage with a set of interrelated domains where its impact will be most consequential.
Priority Areas for Action
AI is reshaping digital payments and commerce through fraud detection, risk scoring, and personalised services. While these advancements enhance efficiency, they also risk excluding individuals and enterprises without formal data footprints.
Key Imperatives:
- Build trust infrastructure in AI-driven financial systems
- Expand access for MSMEs, women, and first-time users
- Address risks of data bias and algorithmic exclusion
- Align innovation with regulatory safeguards and accountability
As digital access expands, ensuring safe participation—particularly for women and children—has become critical. AI-enabled moderation and risk detection systems are increasingly central to this effort.
Key Imperatives:
- Strengthen AI-driven safety and risk detection systems
- Embed safety-by-design principles in platforms
- Improve grievance redressal and enforcement mechanisms
- Promote digital literacy and community engagement
- Develop context-sensitive policy frameworks
AI offers transformative potential in diagnostics, public health, and service delivery, especially in underserved regions. However, realising this potential requires overcoming systemic constraints.
Key Imperatives:
- Enhance diagnostic accuracy and early detection
- Strengthen public health decision-making systems
- Expand access in rural and underserved geographies
- Address data quality, bias, and interoperability challenges
- Integrate AI within existing healthcare infrastructure
AI will fundamentally reshape labour markets, entrepreneurship, and productivity. Ensuring inclusive outcomes will depend on how effectively systems adapt.
Key Imperatives:
- Enable workforce transitions and reskilling at scale
- Support MSMEs and startups in AI adoption
- Foster new digital business models and platform economies
- Expand opportunities for youth employment
- Strengthen female labour force participation
Vision of Governance Summit 2026
The Summit seeks to:
- Build a shared understanding of inclusive AI in the Indian context
- Highlight implementation-driven insights and sectoral applications
- Identify policy, institutional, and ecosystem gaps
- Foster cross-sector collaboration and partnerships
- Generate actionable pathways for scaling AI solutions
As AI becomes integral to India’s development trajectory, the question is not merely one of adoption, but of direction and design. Ensuring that AI systems are inclusive, safe, and aligned with societal goals will be central to achieving the vision of Viksit Bharat. Governance Summit 2026 is designed to move beyond high-level discourse toward implementation-oriented outcomes. By structuring the conversation around key pillars of inclusion, safety, well-being, and opportunity, the summit aims to ensure that AI serves as a force for equitable growth and strengthened state capacity—delivering meaningful benefits for all, particularly those at the margins.
A deliberate and coordinated approach—grounded in policy, practice, and partnership—will be essential to harness AI as a force for equitable growth, strengthened governance, and improved citizen outcomes.
Participation is open to registered and incubated startups and enterprises with credible, solution-oriented applications.
Selection will be based on:
- Demonstrated use cases and implementation potential
- Scalability and replicability
- Alignment with inclusion, public value, and responsible AI
- Visibility among decision-makers and key stakeholders
- Access to policy and domain experts
- Opportunities for collaboration, pilots, and scale-up
- Positioning within a national policy and innovation ecosystem
Selected participants will:
- Present solutions through live demonstrations
- Engage with policymakers, practitioners, and experts
- Participate in a curated pitch competition
- Explore partnership and deployment opportunities
High-impact solutions will be recognised with awards during the Summit based on relevance, scalability, and potential policy significance.
AI startups and innovators developing impactful and scalable solutions are invited to participate in the Exhibition by submitting a short video pitch describing their solution, the problem it addresses, and its potential for real-world deployment and scale.
The guidelines for video are given in the submission link.
The AI Exhibition provides a unique opportunity to position innovative solutions within a policy-relevant and implementation-focused ecosystem. By bringing together innovation and governance, it aims to accelerate the adoption of AI solutions that are inclusive, scalable, and aligned with India’s development priorities.