Work and Employment in the Times of Automation and Artificial Intelligence: The Indian Case

This chapter is a study of how automation and AI may impact employment and skills, probing the role of institutions and actors, and its policy implications. To the purpose, it critically assesses the National Strategy on AI recently devised by the NITI Aayog, Government of India. It undertakes a meta-analysis of data and recent evidence to look at how recent developments in AI and advanced robotics have become a disruptive technology insofar as Indian labour market and employment structures are concerned, and the issues that redressal mechanisms (viz. regulation and institutions) needs to address. The main argument is that the current National Strategy on AI does not take into account the logic of capital accumulation in India where a large informal economy interlocked with the formal economy is central to how work and employment is organised, skills are developed and deployed, and where a majority labour are locked in insecure, low pay and unprotected jobs. Any strategy has to start by acknowledging this reality in the Indian context, and then address it – something lacking in the current strategy.