How India can protect jobs amidst the rapid AI march

We are standing at the edge of a tectonic shift—a foundational transformation in how work will be done, how knowledge will be accessed, and how value will be created. Generative AI is already reshaping our institutions, industries and individual lives at breakneck speed.

- V Ramgopal Rao

And India, with its youthful population and expanding digital footprint, is both uniquely positioned and highly vulnerable. We produce over 10 million graduates annually, including 15 million engineers. Yet many of them remain underemployed, poorly paid, or stuck in jobs that are already becoming obsolete. While the official unemployment rate is 5.6%, the underemployment and low-productivity trap runs much deeper.

From contract review in law firms to radiology scans in hospitals, from coding assistants to synthetic voiceovers, AI is automating tasks we thought were safe for decades. We are entering an era where knowledge work itself is under threat. And the frightening part is: AI won't just replace jobs, it will hollow them out, change their nature, and widen inequalities between the AI-haves and have-nots. What can India do to prepare its workforce for an AI-driven future? And how do we ensure that this transformation becomes a force for inclusion, not exclusion?