Research · Track 05
Maharashtra AI Policy
What the state can do for applied AI that firms and universities cannot do alone.
4–8 contributors
Open — seeking a lead
5–15 hrs/week contributing · 20+ hrs/week core
Why now
Context
Maharashtra is writing AI policy while the industrial base it applies to — Pune's manufacturing and services SMEs — has almost no representation in the drafting. Policy written without that input tends to fund capability that already exists in large firms and misses the constraints an SME actually faces. The window for evidence to be useful is while a document is being drafted, not after it is published.
This is the first track with work already in hand rather than a lead to recruit, which makes it the odd one out on this page and worth reading as such.
The argument for doing it at all is narrow. IIDA has a problem bank — real constraints, submitted by real firms, with costs attached. That is the input a policy process rarely gets, because the firms who have it are not usually in the room. The contribution here is evidence, not opinion.
The argument against, which the kill criteria above states plainly: policy work is the easiest kind of work to look busy at. Meetings attended, drafts reviewed, relationships built — none of which is an artefact anyone can check. If what we submit cannot be pointed at afterwards, and cannot be traced to something a firm actually told us, then this stopped being research and became lobbying, and it should close.
Sub-themes
Scope
- Where state action changes an outcome that private capital does not reach
- Compute, data and talent access for firms below the enterprise tier
- Procurement as an instrument — what the state buying AI would actually change
- Skills pipelines tied to real industrial demand rather than headcount targets
- Evidence the state can act on, at the resolution policy is written in
Year one deliverables
Output
- A written submission to the state's AI policy process
- An evidence note on SME constraints, drawn from the problem bank
- A public record of what we argued, whether or not it was adopted
If the policy process closes without our submission being read, or the work becomes advocacy without evidence behind it, this closes rather than continuing as a relationship-building exercise. Influence that cannot be pointed at is not a deliverable.