THE OTHER HALF OF FUTURE: WOMEN'S ROLE IN AI AGE

To take off in the Intelligence Age, India cannot depend only on one engine. More women have to be welcomed into IT. It's a moral as well as economic imperative

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WHEN the Indian IT industry began taking shape in the early 1980s, we were operating in an environment of scarcity. Capital was expensive, infrastructure was fragile and the world's confidence in Indian engineering was untested. Yet, over four decades, we built a global services powerhouse on the back of process excellence, English-speaking talent and an insatiable hunger to learn. That era defined India as the world's services back office.

Today, we stand at a far more volatile and consequential inflection point. We are transitioning from the Information Age to the Intelligence Age. Artificial Intelligence is not merely a new tool; it is a fundamental reshuffling of the global economic order. We can no longer rely on the playbook of the past. The next phase of India's growth will not come from labour arbitrage or services alone, but from becoming a product nation-an economy driven by innovation, intellectual property and high-value research.

However, there is a glaring structural weakness in our foundation. India is currently attempting to take off while flying on one engine. The missing engine is the full economic participation of its women. The argument for bringing more women into the workforce is often framed as a matter of social justice or diversity. While those are valid moral arguments, the economic argument is far more urgent.

Consider the data. In China, the female labour force participation rate hovers near 60 percent. Women there have been a driving force in manufacturing, technology and the explosion of digital entrepreneurship. This participation was a critical component of China's rapid ascent to superpower status. In contrast, India's female labour force participation rate remains stubbornly low, often estimated below 30 percent.