Mishik Sharma

A recent opinion article by three Ashoka University economists (titled "AI won’t create India’s jobs crisis, but it could deepen it", published on 16 August in Economic Times) argues that artificial intelligence may not create India’s jobs crisis, but it could deepen an existing one. India already suffers from a shortage of productive middle-skill employment. Too many educated young people compete for too few routes into work that offers status, security and mobility. Much recent employment growth has been in low-productivity agriculture and informal services. AI, by encroaching on the cognitive tasks that once provided entry points into white-collar work, risks hollowing out the middle still further. The diagnosis is largely correct. The prescriptions — productive non-farm jobs, technology-complementary occupations, and role-specific AI skilling — are sensible as far as they go. They do not go far enough. The article treats the problem primarily as a labour-market and skilli...

I. From Political Independence to Institutional Capability India enters its 80th year of Independence with an ambition that would have seemed extraordinary in 1947: to become a developed nation by 2047. The vision of Viksit Bharat is not simply an aspiration for a larger economy. It implies the development of capabilities across manufacturing, agriculture and food processing, technology and innovation, infrastructure, defence, energy and the green and blue economies. In their Independence Day addresses, President Droupadi Murmu (in the I-Day eve address) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed considerable emphasis on the people and institutions that must carry this transformation forward — students, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, workers, and public institutions. Yet ambitious development requires not only productive capabilities, but also institutions capable of governing the increasingly complex economy that those capabilities will create. This brings regulation into an impor...