DeepPique

Why can’t India build AI like China? Our software engineers have other priorities 

Now that a Chinese startup DeepSeek has produced a large language model that has cut the legs from under the hype factory of OpenAI and Nvidia, lopping off over $500bn in its market cap in one day, people are asking that old chestnut asked through centuries by underperforming parents to underperforming children: If Sharmaji’s son can do it, why can’t you? 

Why can’t India build AI? First of all, India does build AI. We call our mothers AI, we are Aspirational India, Air India has been our contribution to the world’s sky. Nvidia has India in it and it’s well-known that is why China has attacked it.

But if your point is why there’s no DeepSeek in Delhi, let’s say we choose not to prioritise these things as a nation. We are more concerned about reclaiming temples, decolonisation, triple talaq, waqf land, de-Brahminisation, un-patriarchy, correlation between abaadi and haq, social equity, whose behen is more ladli, handing taxpayer money to people who will vote for money, whether Kohli is better or Rohit, when is Bhai’s next picture coming out and saving the Kacha Badam girl’s new dance videos on our Chinese phones. This is what the essence of democracy is: Free will.

On the other hand, China promotes and finances inculcation of such liberal ideas in other countries while maintaining a very autocratic-capitalist regime in their own lands: Financing to the billions investments in AI, cybersecurity and quantum computing. 

DeepSeek never mind, we have DeepFoods. Our private investment, we choose to put in consumer goods, fast food delivery and IPL. Our idea of digital is the provision of low-end tech services to billable customers: 90-hour workweeks, not watching our wives on Sundays, and a bunch of Unclejis in their 60s who are our tech captains pontificating, young people these days…no work culture. 

China instead chooses to invest in technologies that will automate low-end tech services, doing to India what they did to Nvidia, so that we in India will be left with only Murthy’s simplicity and America’s Perplexity. Then all software engineers will be working for Mnrega and some will be getting free bus rides. But hey we have our choice to say kagaz nahin dikhayenge (won’t show our papers) while China has the tyranny of control. As they say in secular Bengal, khela hobe. Game on.