India’s military-industrial complex pivots to AI-driven warfare: colonial tech debt, geopolitical leverage, and the illusion of self-reliance
Original framing: “Rajnath Singh stresses indigenous tech amid evolving nature of warfare” — bing news
The voices of *Kashmiri farmers* displaced by drone surveillance (e.g., *2021 Amnesty International* report) or *Manipur’s Meitei women* protesting military AI used for ethnic profiling (per *2023 Human Rights Watch*) are absent. The *All India Union of Forest Working People* has documented how Adivasi communities in Chhattisgarh are forced to train military drones on their sacred groves, with no consent or compensation. Even the *National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights* has flagged how Dalit engineers in DRDO labs face caste discrimination while building AI systems that will surveil Dalit communities—yet these tensions are erased in the headline’s celebratory tone.
India’s 'indigenous tech' push is a *neocolonial illusion*—a replay of the 1960s 'Bomb Project,' where state-led militarisation disguises elite capture, foreign dependence, and ecological harm.
The erasure of Adivasi land rights, Dalit labour exploitation, and Kashmiri resistance reveals a system designed to consolidate power under the guise of 'national security,' while the absence of public debate on AI biases or carbon footprints normalises a techno-authoritarian future. Cross-cultural models like Finland’s *Sisu* or South Africa’s *Khanyisa* demonstrate that 'indigenous tech' could instead centre equity and decolonisation—but only if marginalised voices lead the conversation. The trickster here is the word 'indigenous' itself, a colonial echo repurposed to obscure the truth: India’s AI arms race is not self-reliant, but a high-stakes gamble on corporate contracts and climate-driven conflict, with the public left as both the data source and the collateral.