On artificial intelligence, the Prime Minister called for its effective use in governance, while making clear that human intervention and judgement must remain central to decision-making. He encouraged Secretaries to explore innovative ways of combining AI’s capabilities with human expertise rather than treating the two as substitutes for one another.

New Delhi, Aug 20: Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the third in a series of high-level meetings with Secretaries to the Government of India at his residence on Lok Kalyan Marg on Thursday, focusing on the future roadmap for ministries handling infrastructure and connectivity, security and external affairs, and governance.

With deliberations already completed with two earlier groups of Secretaries, the Prime Minister told officials at this session that they should look beyond immediate statistics and day-to-day issues and think with a long-term perspective on how the country’s future ought to be shaped.

A large part of the discussion centred on breaking down silos within government functioning. The Prime Minister stressed that silos are not merely an organisational problem but also a problem of mindset, and that they can exist both horizontally, across departments, and vertically, within hierarchies. He called on officials to take ownership of their responsibilities and to work with a spirit of belongingness rather than confining themselves to departmental boundaries.

To illustrate what effective coordination looks like, the Prime Minister pointed to the way officials across departments came together during the COVID-19 pandemic and during the West Asia crisis. He said such cross-departmental teamwork should not be treated as an exception reserved for emergencies but should become a natural and permanent part of the government’s everyday work culture.

One of the central themes of the meeting was the Prime Minister’s assertion that data is a national asset. He noted that while the government spends considerable resources collecting, storing and managing data, its full value is often lost because of fragmented systems and departmental silos that prevent information from being shared or used effectively. He called for solutions that would allow greater interoperability between data systems across ministries so that data collected for one purpose could be put to wider use elsewhere in government.

On artificial intelligence, the Prime Minister called for its effective use in governance, while making clear that human intervention and judgement must remain central to decision-making. He encouraged Secretaries to explore innovative ways of combining AI’s capabilities with human expertise rather than treating the two as substitutes for one another.

The Prime Minister also spoke about the value of informal interaction within the bureaucracy, urging senior officers to build more personal and informal engagement with their junior colleagues and to strengthen networks that cut across cadres and departments. He said this kind of team spirit could not be built through formal meetings alone.

Widening the circle of ideas feeding into government, the Prime Minister called for greater engagement between government departments, universities and young people, saying such interaction could bring fresh and unconventional perspectives into policymaking that the bureaucracy might not arrive at on its own.

On strategic and economic priorities, the Prime Minister called for research and innovation to be strengthened in the defence sector, stressing the need to make India’s defence industry more competitive globally. He spoke of the importance of developing new defence-focused courses and building stronger human resources for the sector.

He also addressed India’s maritime ambitions, recalling that shipbuilding had earlier been granted infrastructure status, and asked officials to assess in mission mode whether that status was delivering its intended results. He reiterated that India needed to move beyond simply developing ports towards a model of port-led development, with better connectivity between manufacturing units and export-oriented industries so that the country’s maritime infrastructure could be fully leveraged for trade.

The Prime Minister closed the meeting by reiterating the need for a whole-of-government approach built on coordination, innovative thinking and collective ownership to address complex challenges and shape India’s future with a long-term outlook.

The meeting was attended by the Cabinet Secretary, Secretaries of key ministries and departments, and senior government officials, who shared their perspectives on sectoral priorities, emerging challenges and issues around implementation.
PIB Release, 20 Aug 2026