India stands at a crossroads. The government’s ambitious push to position the country as a global leader in artificial intelligence is laudable, but it must be accompanied by equally ambitious safeguards for the millions whose livelihoods could be disrupted by automation.
The recently announced National AI Mission, with its Rs 10,000 crore allocation, signals serious intent. India’s strengths are real: a vast pool of engineering talent, a thriving startup ecosystem, and a domestic market of 1.4 billion potential users.
But the breathless enthusiasm surrounding AI obscures uncomfortable questions. What happens to the 4.5 million call centre workers whose jobs are most immediately threatened? What of the millions in data entry, basic accounting, and routine legal work?
Learning from history
The IT revolution of the 1990s and 2000s offers both hope and caution. It created enormous wealth and a globally competitive industry, but its benefits were concentrated among English-speaking, college-educated urban youth. The vast majority of India’s workforce was left untouched.
The AI revolution risks repeating this pattern on a far larger scale, unless policymakers act decisively to ensure that the productivity gains from AI are broadly shared.
Technology is neither inherently liberating nor oppressive. It is the political and economic choices we make around it that determine whether it serves the many or the few.
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