MeitY to release AI regulation consultation paper in a month

The name is S Krishnan, he is the secretary of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and he has surveyed the artificial intelligence industry and arrived at a conclusion of staggering moral clarity: 'the time has come for AI regulation.' That MeitY will now release a regulation-focused consultation paper *in a month* is the good news. The bad news is that a consultation paper is, functionally, a document whose entire purpose is to be a document. And the stated focus is safety — which, in regulatory dialect, is the word you reach for when the substance hasn't been agreed yet.

The loveliest detail is the delegation. Krishnan is reported to have *requested the department to come out with the paper*, which is the governance equivalent of emailing yourself a task and flagging it urgent. He didn't specify what should be in it, because specifying is what the paper is for, and the paper is a month away, and after the paper come the comments on the paper, and after the comments comes the framework, and after the framework comes the bill, and after the bill comes the committee, and somewhere at the back of that queue stands an actual enforceable rule, still holding its ticket.

This is a global genre now. Rep. Lori Trahan's liability discussion draft we flagged from Washington was the American edition — a bill-shaped object with the legal heft of a strongly worded napkin. MeitY has delivered the sequel with the same plot beats: a senior official, a flash of clarity, a scheduled consultation, a safety focus, and not one line of text anyone could be held to. India does have one advantage: a month is genuinely brisk for a jurisdiction that could easily have spent a year deciding which committee decides. Meanwhile the models will not pause politely for the consultation window.