Disruption Ahead

The future may be electric, but India's auto workforce is struggling to keep pace with the transition to green mobility

- Rakshit Kumar

Buoyed by the steady growth of India’s automobile sector in the 2010s, Mumbai-based Mayank Nikam decided to pursue an industrial training institute (ITI) diploma in a related field.

In 2012, he was hired by a leading auto-component manufacturer as a contract worker at its Nashik plant, where he was assigned to help produce injectors, a device that delivers fuel into the cylinders of an internal combustion engine (ICE).

For the next several years, things went smoothly. But in October 2021, Nikam and around 700 other workers were abruptly told not to report to work until further notice.

“It was not related to Covid,” Nikam claims. “Production had already resumed at the plant after the lockdown was lifted. They [the company] said the demand for diesel engine injectors was impacted partly because the government was promoting electric vehicles [EVs].”

While the company never publicly cited EVs as the reason, its annual report for financial year 2023-24 offered a telling glimpse of how it was grappling with a rapidly evolving market.

“Challenges brought in [by] a constant changing diesel market [and] policy changes are mitigated through transformational initiatives across all domains including people, process and localisation,” the report said, referring to its Nashik plant.

Though the company reversed its decision to lay off the workers in 2024 following a court order, the damage was done. The incident was enough to raise alarm among workers’ unions.

“If ICEs become obsolete due to EVs, the related supply chain will also be impacted,” says Surya Dev Tyagi, president of Hind Mazdoor Sabha, Haryana, a union that engages with workers in the automobile sector.