India’s AI governance guidelines favour coordination over control, set agile framework to balance innovation and risk: Nasscom

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National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) called the India’s AI governance guidelines a “balanced blueprint” that creates an agile framework managing risks and innovations.

The technology industry body also highlighted the effective coordination the proposed architecture that includes AI Governance Group (AIGG), Technology & Policy Expert Committee (TPEC), and the AI Safety Institute (AISI) will provide by having a “whole-of-government approach without creating an over-centralised regulator.”

“India’s final AI Governance Guidelines opt for coordination over control, setting out an agile, principle-based framework that supports innovation while managing risk through practical, evidence-led tools,” the industry body said in a statement.

It added, “The Guidelines’ emphasis that sectoral regulators remain in the lead on enforcement and oversight reflects a deliberate effort to preserve the balance between flexibility and accountability.”

On November 5, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had formally launched the India AI Governance Guidelines, outlining a national framework for ethical and responsible deployment of artificial intelligence.

“On risk mitigation, the Guidelines have absorbed the call for proportionality and evidence-based governance- voluntary measures, graded liability, and a non-punitive AI incidents system form the backbone of this approach. The direction is pragmatic, learn from actual incidents, iterate governance tools, and avoid regulating hypothetical harms,” Nasscom pointed out.

Nasscom said that the legal reform track mirrors its recommendations to rely on existing statutes, identify real gaps, and undertake targeted amendments before considering any new horizontal law.

“The Guidelines’ explicit statement that “a separate AI law is not needed at this stage” is a near-verbatim reflection of our position,” said Nasscom.

Nasscom went on to recommend some practical guidelines as next steps:

• Enabling a single reporting interface that routes across privacy, cybersecurity, and safety mechanisms.
• Developing clearer conformance pathways for voluntary commitments.
• Designing a concrete programme plan for regulatory sandboxes and tool-building under AISI and TPEC.

In its current form, the alignment is strong across all of these themes within the AI Governance Guidelines.

“Divergences are limited to scope (the breadth of voluntary commitments), operational detail (how sandboxes and incident routing will function), and sequencing (whether some mechanisms will be federated rather than unified). These are matters of implementation rather than philosophy,” the industry body noted.