India challenges western AI monopoly with open source tech

Nearly every AI headline assumes unlimited cloud connectivity and a credit card, so it is refreshing to see a serious push for models that work offline on a village clinic's cheapest hardware. The skeptical read is right there too, hackathons are good at demos and bad at the unglamorous years of engineering and distribution that follow. Still, treating AI as public infrastructure rather than a subscription is a genuinely different bet than what Silicon Valley is making.