India needs to upskill quickly to prepare for an AI-driven future

Recent assessments of India’s skilling landscape point to a clear warning: the country’s workforce is not yet ready for the rapid AI-driven transformation that is already reshaping labour markets. Without urgent action, a large percentage of India’s population could be left behind in the future of work. The following is an analytical perspective on the challenges India faces, and why accelerating upskilling is now essential.

Massive economic opportunity, but big risks

In a report released a few months back supported by Google.org and ADB, it is noted that AI has the potential to contribute 3 trillion US dollars to the GDP of Asia-Pacific by 2030, with India being one of the significant beneficiaries of this trend because of its big workforce of young people. But unless steps are taken, AI can only further increase inequality as positions with a high risk of automation, such as data entry, administrative support, customer service, among others, are mostly occupied by disadvantaged populations such as women, informal workers, and low-digital-literacy people. Another important issue is the skills gap in the Indian youth since 1 out of 5 young adults have already enrolled in some AI skilling courses, despite the fact that nowadays employers prefer critical thinking, flexibility, and the capability to work with AI applications rather than degrees.

Another aspect highlighted in the report is that the digital divide in India is still a significant obstacle: only approximately 13% of under-25s in South Asia of all people have access to the internet at home, and many employees, especially older ones, cannot cope with language and internet illiteracy issues. In general, participation in AI-training in Asia-Pacific is only 15% with 57% of the participating companies unaware that training exists, with most workers showing preference towards practical and real-world modes of learning. It means only 13% of young people (below age 25) have home internet access. This highlights a major digital divide affecting.

• school and college students

• young job seekers

• entry-level workers

Recent graduates, informal workers, women, older adults, and low-literacy groups are underserved clients requiring tailored skilling pathways, in particular, gender- and multilingual-oriented ones when women are re-entering the job market. Small SMEs are also very important to the Indian economy, and they do not have the resources to implement AI without public- private assistance.

The report also finds that despite the promising programs such as Grow with Google/training 60 million people and the AI Opportunity Fund/Up-skilling 500,000+ workers are not sufficient to handle the magnitude of disruption and opportunity in the future.

Barriers: Digital divide and contextual relevance

The report is more or less a red-flag regarding the future of the labor market in India: the demographic dividend, represented by the large youthful population of India, can easily be lost as a missed opportunity in case only 20% of the young people can be artificially intelligent, and 20% of them no longer has the relevant future-specific capacities. The latter is particularly concerning since monotonous administrative positions, which are most susceptible to automation, can be occupied by the most vulnerable and least digitised employees, endangering their positions.

As much as AI boasts of massive economic benefits (possibly the ability to add trillions in the sum of GDP), it would result in increased inequality unless it is used to include the whole world in skilling. The report makes a prudent choice in prioritising contextual, practical training, including data-oriented programs that will mimic real AI tool use, over the essentially theoretical courses, which is compatible with the existing results on what is effective in the learning interventions. The presence of ecosystem players, such as government agencies, NGOs, EdTech companies, and corporations, is essential: the Google.org-ADB AI Opportunity Fund is one of the most effective examples, yet much more collaboration is needed, in particular, to target MSMEs and underserved populations.

Strategic response: The AI opportunity fund

They have opened an AI Opportunity Fund of 15 million US dollars via AVPN to mitigate the growing AI-skills gap by investing in 49 Asian-Pacific social-impact organisations to provide AI training to underserved people. Fund models targeted include scalable options like the "train-the-trainer" programs, multilingual learning content, and broad-community outreach so that those who are locked out of the digital ecosystem can get access to it.

To India, this is huge: data-professional wise, the young population is one of its greatest strategic assets, so its lack of AI-readiness is a tangible threat to talents, and may cause mass displacement of jobs eventually, unless action is taken sooner. 

Simultaneously, in the absence of focused interventions, the adoption of AI may further increase inequality by driving vulnerable employees even further. This explains why it is critical that India should incorporate AI upskilling into its national skill development missions as opposed to it being a project in a niche sector of tech. It will also involve close cooperation between NGOs, EdTech platforms, industry and government to develop inclusive and scalable AI-training opportunities to inform the workforce in India about what the next decade offers.

Unless India takes a step in the present to develop a more AI-savvy workforce, it will risk missing out on a colossal economic opportunity - and more importantly have a huge proportion of its population ill equipped to face the future of work.