India's race to adopt AI sparks a deeper question: How can technology respect human rights?

India is rolling out AI in welfare delivery (Aadhaar-linked benefits), policing (facial recognition in Hyderabad, Delhi, Lucknow), and credit scoring — at scale, with no comprehensive AI law. Lead with concrete deployments and documented harms: wrongful arrests from FRT mismatches, ration cards denied due to authentication failures. The angle: the world's largest democracy is becoming the largest live experiment in algorithmic governance, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 has carve-outs that exempt most government AI use. Connect to the Muslim-citizenship and CAA/NRC context — biometric exclusion is not hypothetical here.