Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser launches AI playbooks to scale responsible intelligence for agriculture and SMEs

In a significant boost to India’s digital-economy and agricultural transformation ambitions, the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) released three key publications under the “AI for India 2030” initiative, aimed at accelerating AI adoption across agriculture and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The three titles unveiled—“Future Farming in India: AI Playbook for Agriculture”, “Transforming Small Businesses: An AI Playbook for India’s SMEs”, and “Shaping the AI Sandbox Ecosystem for the Intelligent Age: White Paper”—were launched at an event attended by PSA Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, along with senior officials such as MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan, MSME Secretary S.C.L. Das and Dr. Parvinder Maini from the PSA’s office.

The initiative is driven by the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) India in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and supported by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) alongside the office of the PSA. Its ambition is to construct frameworks for responsible, inclusive and scalable AI that align with India’s national development priorities and global competitiveness.

In the agriculture‐focused playbook, strategic guidance is laid out for integrating data-driven imaging, satellite and sensor information, digital crop surveys and AI-based predictive models to improve productivity and farmer decision-making. One official noted that the potential of AI to transform agriculture is increasingly validated and that the government is exploring approaches such as combining digital crop surveys with imaging and data analytics to improve accuracy and insights.

The SME playbook offers a roadmap to help thousands of small businesses enhance productivity, improve access to credit and markets, and adopt AI-driven solutions in manufacturing, services and value-chain linkages. It seeks to democratise AI capabilities for a sector that remains core to India’s employment and growth engine.

The third publication, the AI Sandbox White Paper, outlines the operational framework and governance for creating safe, controllable environments—“sandboxes”—in which AI innovations can be tested, scaled and regulated. This marks a move towards building India’s AI infrastructure, governance norms and ecosystems in line with trusted, ethical deployment.

Crucially, the initiative emphasises a multi-stakeholder implementation model, involving state governments, industry bodies, technology providers and financiers in coalitions to translate playbook insights into funded projects. A unified monitoring framework will track progress across indicators such as AI adoption rates, productivity gains, cost reductions, improved credit access and stronger market realisation. A dedicated knowledge platform will document and disseminate best practices and success stories, enabling continuous learning and scaling of effective solutions across India’s AI ecosystem.

For India’s agriculture and MSME sectors, the timing could not be more opportune. With the agriculture sector facing challenges of yield stagnation, climate stress, fragmented value chains and rising input costs, AI offers a potentially transformative tool. Simultaneously, India’s SME sector confronts productivity challenges, capital constraints and global competition—areas where AI-enabled solutions can provide leap-frog opportunities. The government’s initiative suggests a shift from piecemeal digital efforts to a more strategic, systems-wide approach driven by policy, frameworks and ecosystem mobilisation.

Nevertheless, the road ahead remains complex. Adoption of AI in agriculture at scale will require infrastructure upgrades, extension services, digital literacy among farmers, reliable data ecosystems, affordable access to solutions and adaptation to local conditions. For SMEs, obstacles such as capital access, regulatory clarity, talent ecosystems and technology adoption readiness persist. The Sandbox White Paper acknowledges that establishing trust, standardisation and governance will be essential to ensure that AI does not exacerbate inequalities or introduce unintended harms.

India’s ambition, as signalled through these publications, is to build not just a usage layer of AI but to anchor the country in the architecture of responsible and scalable artificial intelligence. For the agriculture and SME sectors, this means preparing the ground for a future where data-driven decisions, predictive insights and automated systems become the norm rather than the exception. As the global economy leans ever more heavily on digital tools, India is striving to ensure it is not left behind but instead becomes a leader in deploying AI for national development.