The Most Important AI User in India Is 72 and Lives Alone

Forget the coder in Bengaluru. Forget the start-up founder pitching investors in Gurugram. The most important user of artificial intelligence in India may be a 72-year-old woman in a village you have never heard of.  

Picture her. Her elder son drives a cab in Pune. The younger one works in a textile mill in Surat. The house that once held eleven people now holds one. On the shelf sits a strip of tablets the doctor prescribed last month. She cannot read the label, so she takes them when she remembers. Her phone rings twice a day: once, on a good day, from her son, and once from a stranger who says her bank account will be frozen unless she shares a number.

She is not a statistic. She is somebody’s mother. Quite possibly, she is yours.

A country growing old faster than it notices 

We like to call India a young nation, and it is. But it is ageing faster than it is getting rich. The UNFPA’s India Ageing Report 2023 projects that by 2050 one in five Indians will be over 60: roughly 35 crore people, about as many as the entire population of the United States today. Japan, where nearly three in ten people are already over 65, took half a century to get there. We will get there with far less money and far less time.

The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India, the largest survey of its kind, found that about three in four Indians over 60 live with at least one chronic illness: diabetes, blood pressure, arthritis, heart disease. Millions of them will manage those illnesses alone, in villages their children have left for work.

In the districts I have served, the most bewildered visitors at public hearings were often not farmers or job-seekers. They were elderly people clutching plastic bags full of papers they could not read, sent from one counter to the next. They did not lack entitlements. They lacked someone to explain them.

That someone, increasingly, could be a machine.

Four jobs AI can do tonight

This is not science fiction. Most of it runs on a basic smartphone today.

It can read for her. Point the camera at a prescription, an electricity bill or a government letter, and an AI assistant can read it aloud in Bhojpuri, Santhali or Tamil, and explain it in plain words: take the white tablet after breakfast, the bill is due on the 15th, the letter is about your health card.

It can remind her. A voice that says, at nine every morning, “Amma, have you taken your BP medicine?” sounds trivial. It is not. The World Health Organization has estimated that even in rich countries, only about half of patients with chronic illnesses take their medicines as prescribed. For someone managing three prescriptions alone, a reminder can be the difference between a stable month and a hospital bed.

It can guard her. Indians reported losing more than ₹20,000 crore to cyber fraud in 2024 alone, according to the Union Home Ministry, and older people living alone are among the easiest targets. Some Indian telecom operators already use AI to flag suspected spam calls before the phone is answered. Extend that idea, and an assistant can warn an elderly user, in her own language, that the caller asking for an OTP is almost certainly a fraudster, and alert a son in Pune at the same moment.

It can keep her company, and watch over her. Loneliness is not a soft problem. A 2025 report by the WHO Commission on Social Connection linked it to around 8.7 lakh deaths worldwide every year. South Korea, which faces one of the world’s fastest-ageing populations, has handed out AI-enabled speakers to seniors living alone. They chat, play old songs, and, crucially, notice when something is wrong. There are reported cases where a simple spoken call for help to the device brought emergency services to an elderly person’s door.

The pieces already exist in India. eSanjeevani has delivered crores of free teleconsultations. Bhashini can speak all 22 scheduled languages. And since 2024, every citizen aged 70 and above is eligible for health cover of up to ₹5 lakh under Ayushman Bharat, regardless of income. What is missing is the thread that ties them together for the person who needs them most. 

Built for her, not for us

Most technology is designed by the young, for the young. An app that demands a password, an email address and tiny buttons has already lost a 72-year-old.

So here is a simple proposal. Every public digital service in India, and every AI tool built with public money, should pass what I would call the 72-year-old test: can a 72-year-old woman in a village, speaking her own dialect, use it without anyone’s help? If she cannot, the service is not finished. It is still a draft. Designing for her is not charity. A system that works for the most hesitant user works better for everyone else too.

It also needs a human bridge. India already has one in every village: the ASHA worker, the anganwadi sevika, the self-help group didi. A single afternoon of training could turn each of them into a digital saathi who sets up the phone, records the family’s numbers and teaches one simple habit: when a call frightens you, hang up and ring your child first.

And it needs honesty about the limits. An AI can remind a woman to take her medicine; it cannot hold her hand. It can read her letters; it cannot replace her son’s voice on a Sunday call. Her health data must stay private, shared only with her consent. A companion that becomes a substitute for family would be a failure dressed up as progress.

This weekend, do one thing

We spend a great deal of energy debating whether AI will take our jobs or write our children’s essays. Those are real questions. But the quieter question may matter more: will it help our parents grow old with dignity, safety and a little less loneliness?

Governments can build the platforms. Companies can build the apps. But the last mile runs through our own homes. So this weekend, call your mother or father. Better still, sit beside them. Set up a voice assistant in their language. Show them how to make it read a prescription aloud. Save your number as the first one it should call.

It will take twenty minutes. And somewhere in a quiet house, the next time a stranger calls with a threat, or the label on a strip of tablets refuses to make sense, a 72-year-old woman will not be quite so alone.

India will build many clever machines in the coming decade. Each should face just one test: does it work for her? In the end, whether those machines were worth building will be decided not in laboratories or boardrooms, but by her.

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Dr. Manish Ranjan is an IAS officer and the author of eight books on Artificial Intelligence, including Will Artificial Intelligence Enslave Humans by 2033? An alumnus of the University of Oxford and UC Berkeley, he is a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award and the National e-Governance Award, and was recognised among India’s ‘Top 25 Changemakers of 2025’. Views expressed are personal.