AI, automation: India's middle class has hit a breaking point

THE RISE OF AI AND AUTOMATION, COMBINED WITH THE POOR QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION, HAS PRODUCED A GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY CRISIS

- HT Correspondent

For decades, India's growth story has rested on the spectacular rise of its middle class. But a new book argues that this very group—roughly 40 million income-tax-paying households—is now under acute strain.

Facing a convergence of job disruption, wage stagnation, and rising debt, the middle class may no longer be the engine of growth it once was. That is the argument of Break Point: The Crisis of the Middle Class and the Future of Work, by Saurabh Mukherjea, Nandita Rajhansa, and Sapana Bhavsar. Mukherjea and Rajhansa discussed their provocative thesis on a recent episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mukherjea is the founder of Marcellus Investment Managers and the author of six previous books. Prior to setting up Marcellus, he served as CEO of Ambit Capital. Rajhansa is an economist and a smalland mid-cap analyst at Marcellus.