I was incredibly happy on behalf of farmers across the state of Maharashtra when reports about the MahaAgri-AI Policy 2025–2029 were published a few weeks ago. I must confess that, for the past three decades or so, I have often felt as if farmers don’t get the importance they deserve, so the announcement of an AI policy went a long way towards reassuring me that the government cares about the people who feed us. It also reassured me because if there’s one government that understands how best to use technology for everyone’s benefit, it is the people who manage this state. Proof of their tech-savvy is all around us, if we care to look. Pay a visit to any government website if you don’t believe me.

The press release about this new policy referred to it as a ‘transformative step’ towards revolutionizing Indian agriculture. It also mentioned generative AI (used mostly to create content of some sort), drones, robotics, ‘computer vision’, and predictive analytics, which made me applaud the PR agency that had drafted it. After all, these words don’t crop up at Mantralaya as often as most of us would imagine, do they?