As India accelerates toward Viksit Bharat 2047, states are emerging as the engines of AI-led governance transformation. Dr. Ravi Kota, IAS, Chief Secretary, Government of Assam, in conversation with Muskan Jaiswal of Elets News Network, shares how the state is positioning itself as an AI-First administration, reimagining citizen services through Sewa Setu 2.0, embedding Agentic AI into governance workflows, strengthening data stewardship under the upcoming Assam State Data Policy 2026, and building resilient, inclusive systems that translate national AI ambition into measurable impact on the ground.

Assam is central to India’s Act East and development narrative. How do you see technology and AI strengthening state capacity to deliver faster, transparent, and citizen-centric governance?

Assam sits at the crossroads of South Asia and SE Asia. *Under the AI-First State Vision of Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma, Chief Minister of Assam and as inspired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi,* we are reimagining citizen services through a multi-year, World Bank-funded project designed to complete our digital transformation over the next few years.

• Sewa Setu 2.0: We are building the next generation of our service portal by decoupling the User Experience (UX) from legacy backend systems, allowing for a seamless, modern interface for citizens.
• Agentic AI: To deliver faster governance, we are implementing Agentic AI to assist public officials in processing applications, significantly reducing processing times and minimizing administrative bottlenecks.
• Aggressive eOffice Expansion: By taking eOffice to the third tier of government, we have removed physical bottlenecks, ensuring that the “Act East” momentum is supported by a swift, paperless bureaucracy from the Secretariat to the Block level.
• Strategic Partnerships: Our MoUs with Google (for AI acceleration) and Bhashini (for local language AI) ensure that these services are inclusive and accessible to every citizen in their own dialect.

As India advances the IndiaAI Mission, what role can states like Assam play in converting national AI policy into real, scalable governance outcomeson the ground?

While the IndiaAI Mission provides the national framework, the “last-mile” implementation happens in the states. Assam is positioning itself as a “Testing Bed” for AI outcomes.

• Policy Readiness: The Assam State Data Policy (ASDP) 2026 is nearing finalization. It aligns with recent digital advancements and the DPDP Act 2023, providing the legal and operational framework to scale AI governance.
• Quality Data for AI: Crucially, the ASDP underscores that “great AI” requires high-quality, reliable data. It recognizes data as a key sovereign resource for both the State and the Nation, making the identification and sharing of high-quality datasets a top priority to fuel the national AI ecosystem.
• World Bank Engagement: Our 5-year engagement with the World Bank is specifically strengthening our data ecosystem (Result Area 3), moving us from “Data Access” to “Data Analytics” through the newly operationalized Centre for Data Management (CDM).
• Universal AI Literacy: We intend to pursue mandatory, role- based AI training for all government officials (Awareness to Practitioner levels), ensuring they are equipped to manage the Agentic AI tools being integrated into backend systems.

Viksit Bharat 2047 places strong emphasis on cooperative federalism. How can Centre–State collaboration, supported by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and AI-enabled decision-making, accelerate inclusive growth in the North East?

Cooperative federalism in the AI era means the Centre provides the “Rails” (DPI) while the State builds the “Train” (Applications). Assam is already a leader in this space, having been conferred the Integration Excellence Award by MeitY in 2025 for integrating over 500 services with DigiLocker.

• Distributed Citizen Registry: We are operationalizing an alternate model of a Distributed Citizen Registry, where DigiLocker serves as the core “Trust Infrastructure.” This model is fully compliant with the DPDP Act, enabling citizens to curate their own data and choose which documents are authoritative for their digital profile.
• Cooperation for Better Governance: This “Citizen- Curated Truth” model fosters a unique partnership where citizens cooperate with the government to ensure their records are accurate. By validating their own data, citizens help the government help them better, enabling seamless, one-click access to schemes and benefits.
• State Data Infrastructure: We are developing a comprehensive State Data Catalogue (as part of the World Bank-supported RA 3) to map data assets across all departments, facilitating secure data exchange with Central agencies and NE neighbors.
• Sovereign Infrastructure & Regional Leadership: We have recently started running our critical eOffice infrastructure directly from the State Data Centre (SDC). We are currently upgrading this capability and intend to offer eOffice hosting and managed digital services to other States in the region, positioning Assam as a hub for secure, sovereign governance in the North East.

Assam faces recurring challenges related to floods and climate stress. How can AI-driven early warning systems and predictive analytics transform disaster preparedness and long-term climate resilience?

Assam has a long-standing commitment to science-led disaster mitigation. Since 2009, in collaboration with NESAC and national stakeholders, we initiated the Flood Early Warning System (FLEWS). What began as a single-district pilot has evolved into a unique, basin-based system covering 14 districts, providing village-level alerts with lead times of 7 to 18 hours.

• Strategic Shift to Proactive Preparedness: While FLEWS has significantly reduced loss of life through weather monitoring and inundation simulation, growing climate stress demands a further shift toward proactive, data-driven preparedness. We are leveraging AI to integrate multi-source data for highly location-specific and time-bound forecasts.
• Impact-Based Planning: Under the World Bank-funded Program, we are developing analytical capabilities to move beyond mere hazard-based alerts. We are transitioning to Impact- Based Planning, using AI to predict effects on specific habitations, infrastructure, health facilities, and agriculture, enabling the timely pre- positioning of resources.
• Long-Term Resilience: By integrating satellite remote sensing with AI-driven analytics, we are enabling near real-time flood mapping and damage assessment. This evidence- based approach informs long-term floodplain zoning and embankment management, transforming flood management from annual crisis response into anticipatory, resilient governance.

As AI begins to influence decisions affecting livelihoods and welfare delivery, how should state governments ensure ethical use, transparency, and human oversight in public systems?

While we are firm believers in the power of AI to transform lives and governance, we also believe in AI with a human face. For the Government of Assam, citizen services and governance are ultimately by humans, for humans.

• Capability Augmentation: Although automation can enhance efficiency, the State primarily views AI as a tool to augment the capability of government servants. Our goal is to make our officials more productive and efficient while ensuring they continue to provide the essential “human element” in public service.
• Human-in-the-Loop: We believe that true accountability and ownership only follow human engagement. Consequently, in our proposed design for Agentic AI in citizen services—which will start rolling out this year under our re-imagined citizen services, Sewa Setu 2.0—we have established Human-in-the-Loop as a mandatory requirement. AI will assist in processing, but the final decision and responsibility rest with a human official.
• Policy and Compliance: Recognizing data as a key national resource, the Assam State Data Policy 2022 is undergoing significant revision as ASDP 2026. This update ensures our datasets fuel the needs of state and national AI development while achieving stringent compliance with the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. This dual focus protects citizen privacy while positioning Assam as a primary contributor to India’s AI data ecosystem.

Looking ahead to 2047, what institutional reforms and governance capabilities will be most critical for states to fully harness AI for inclusive and sustainable development?

To reach Viksit Bharat 2047, states must undergo a fundamental shift from being technology adopters to becoming AI-led administrations. This transition requires a “Digital-First” foundation. Starting this year, Assam is “sprinting” on this through the following critical reforms:

• Digitization as the Foundation: We recognize that digitization sets the base for AI. Technology adoption cannot be restricted to the Secretariat; it must reach every level of governance, including the third tier. We are achieving this through the aggressive expansion of eOffice to block and local levels, ensuring that all government data is captured digitally at source.
• From Literacy to Proficiency: States must move beyond basic AI literacy toward AI use proficiency. We are currently initiating a pilot for AI Copilots use in a single Department. Based on the results, we expect to expand in phases to cover the whole of Government, empowering officials at every level with intelligent decision- support tools integrated into their day-to-day functioning.
• From Silos to Stewardship: Establishing a central nodal agency for data governance is vital. We are operationalizing the Centre for Data Management (CDM) to serve this stewardship role, ensuring that high-quality, standardized data fuels our AI engines and informs long-term planning.
• Standardized Data Infrastructure: Moving toward a standardized, machine-readable State Data Catalogue for all high-value datasets is essential for inter-departmental interoperability and data-driven transparency.
• Citizen-Centric Digital Infrastructure: Deep integration between service portals and trust infrastructure like DigiLocker is necessary to enable “One-Click” application logic, where verified credentials pre-fill forms and entitlement becomes a portable digital asset.

For instance, certain public services like land records, are characterized by dense legal frameworks and high information asymmetry, where digitization alone does not eliminate citizen friction. To address this, we are piloting Bhu-Sakhi, a multilingual, voice-enabled AI assistant that helps citizens and frontline officials interpret land revenue rules, circulars, and service processes in Assamese, Hindi, and English. By embedding assisted understanding into land governance workflows, Bhu-Sakhi will complement trust infrastructure like DigiLocker and advance truly citizen-centric access to complex services, while retaining full human accountability in decision-making.

Across priority sectors such as health, education, and road infrastructure, what AI-driven initiatives are being implemented or envisioned in Assam and which hold the greatest potential for replication?

Across our priority sectors, we are leveraging AI to bridge gaps in quality and efficiency:

• Education: We see immense potential in AI to democratize quality education. This year, we are launching a pilot for an AI Tutor in select schools, delivering educational content aligned with the state syllabus in English, Hindi, and Assamese. Our vision for the next few years is “Personalized Tutoring for All,” and we are in active talks with Google to leverage Gemini models to provide these personalized tools in all state languages.
• Water Services as a Foundation for Health: Reliable access to safe drinking water is foundational to public health outcomes, yet monitoring service delivery across large numbers of decentralized water supply schemes presents persistent governance challenges. To strengthen operational visibility without imposing high costs, we have adopted mechanisms that leverage existing digital systems and field-level capacity. By combining computer vision and machine learning, we are monitoring daily water supply operations using Jal Soochak, a mobile app that helps interpret bulk flow meter readings helping us get near real-time insight into scheme functionality, supply volumes, and emerging service gaps. This allows early, targeted interventions and supports evidence- based operational planning at scale.

Operational data alone, however, does not fully capture citizen experience. To close this loop, we are also deploying an AI-based Consumer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey system using human-like voice- enabled AI agents to engage households at scale. Multilingual, conversational outreach enables standardized yet nuanced feedback, generating actionable insights for grievance resolution, escalation, and service improvement. By combining operational intelligence with structured citizen feedback, these initiatives strengthen accountability and ensure that water service delivery effectively supports broader health and wellbeing outcomes.

• Road Infrastructure: Assam’s position as the fastest-growing state in India over the last five years is driven by our massive focus on infrastructure. We intend to use AI to extract maximum value for every rupee spent by improving Public Works efficiency. We expect to see significant efficiency improvement through adoption of AI in Infrastructure projects, including AI-based road condition reviews, highly accurate project estimates, optimized project selection, and rigorous monitoring to ensure that our infrastructure is both high-quality and cost-effective.

Replication Blueprints:
• AI Copilots for All: Expanding intelligent decision-support across the entire administrative hierarchy to enhance official proficiency.
• Distributed Citizen Registry via DigiLocker: A DPDP-compliant model enabling citizens to curate their own data for better service delivery.
• DigiLocker-First Strategy: Issuing “Digital Beneficiary Cards” as verifiable credentials to make entitlements portable digital assets.
• Sewa Setu 2.0 & Agentic AI: Modernizing service delivery via decoupled UX and AI processing assistance.
• Linguistic Inclusion: Leveraging Bhashini for real-time governance and education in all state languages.
• Third-Tier eOffice: Digital-first grassroots governance hosted on a sovereign State Data Centre.

The “Assam Model” balances rapid AI adoption with deep institutional data stewardship to ensure growth is both inclusive and sustainable.

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