09-30-2025 
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India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has raised concerns over a growing imbalance between the industry’s rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the country’s shortage of skilled professionals ready to support this overhaul. As India continues to pursue a tech-focused economic strategy, AI is emerging as a major catalyst for boosting performance and infrastructure planning. However, a lack of employee skill readiness may threaten the company’s ability to realize its potential fully.
- India’s shortage of AI-skilled professionals
- AI is not a threat to employment
- Automation may displace mid, low-wage jobs
- AI to replace routine coding and CSR jobs
Speaking at a recent event, Sitharaman emphasized that while industries are actively incorporating AI into operations, they are also struggling with a shortage of skilled talent pool capable of tackling these systems efficiently. The benefits of AI cannot be fully realized unless skilling initiatives are urgently ramped up for an AI-powered future, she said.
“To accelerate growth in our economy, productivity needs to improve and for that AI adaption by industry is must. Many of them are doing it, but there is a mismatch. They are doing AI adoption, but the market is not giving them AI-ready human resources,” the minister said.
Sitharaman called for immediate collaboration between industry, educational institutions, and the government to scale AI-tailored training. Sitharaman also pointed out AI’s ability to tackle infrastructure challenges without forcing population relocation. AI can offer regional, flexible solutions for both emerging and existing urban ecosystems, she said.
“AI should help us give solutions for better cities, urban areas which exist, and for newer urban sectors. I think we need to have a greater understanding that AI probably is capable of giving us in situ solutions without having to remove people from where they are,” she said.
The Indian finance minister also highlighted the urgent need for regulatory guardrails to emerge at par with the rapid development of AI technologies.
Sitharaman rejects AI as threat to jobs; NITI Aayog endorses reskilling
Sitharaman rejected concerns that AI could threaten employment and lead to job displacements.
“I don’t think it’s a gloomy picture of so many people who are going to get thrown out of jobs due to AI. In terms of AI-driven upskilling programmes, I would want more inputs to come to the government to see how best we can use it,” Sitharaman said.
However, India’s NITI Aayog, the central public policy think tank of the government, said in a recent report that the labor market overhaul will be at the core of India’s AI adoption. As AI technologies mature, they are expected to disrupt global employment. Estimates suggest that as much as 35–40% of current jobs worldwide are susceptible to some level of AI-powered automation. This would influence not only advanced economies but also emerging markets like India.
“International benchmarks highlight both the urgency and the opportunity: the World Economic Forum estimates 23–25% of roles will change within five years, the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] finds 27% of jobs are in occupations at high risk of automation,” the NITI Aayog report stated.
While NITI Aayog’s report acknowledged AI’s promise and potential to create new work categories, AI adoption will also render many existing positions obsolete and irrelevant, especially in clerical, routine, and low-skill segments.
As a solution, NITI Aayog suggested that India must prepare its future and current workforce with advanced digital and AI skills necessary to compete in an AI-powered economy. Moreover, the report advised the establishment of strong mechanisms to support displaced workers through large-scale reskilling initiatives and employment transition into emerging sectors.“Projections show that while AI will create many new roles, it will also displace many existing jobs, particularly in clerical, routine, and low-skill segments,” the think tank said.
“For India, the challenge would be twofold: preparing a workforce with advanced digital and AI skills to capture new opportunities, while simultaneously ensuring that those displaced are gainfully employed through reskilling, redeployment, or absorption into other growth sectors of the economy.”
AI-driven automation may displace mid- and low-wage jobs
India’s own Economic Survey 2024-2025 pointed out that while AI is set to introduce widespread automation of economically valuable tasks across multiple sectors, it could also lead to significant job displacement, particularly affecting workers in the middle and lower wage brackets.
The Economic Survey of India examines national trends and helps determine resource allocation for the country’s annual budget.
It emphasized that policymakers must seriously consider the potential impact of automation, particularly in an economy like India, which is primarily service-based, with many workers in the IT sector performing low-value-added tasks. These positions are most vulnerable and risk being replaced by emerging technology like AI as businesses seek to cut costs.
“Deployment of artificial intelligence presents both opportunities and challenges,” V Anantha Nageswaran, India’s Chief Economic Advisor, said during his press conference after the release of the Economic Survey.
“Sometimes we all feel that technology eventually generates more jobs than it displaces. That is true, but the keyword is—eventually. What happens between and eventually is critical, and that is where I think we need to create supporting institutions, enabling institutions to train them, to prepare them and academic curriculums have to change, workplace practices have to change,” Nageswaran pointed out.
Along the same lines, in September 2024, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem pointed out that as AI becomes more established in the economy and its impacts more transformative, the technology could destroy more jobs than it creates. People who may lose their work to automation may struggle to find new working opportunities, as AI could decrease the number of non-automated tasks so much that there may not be enough work left for the displaced workers.
AI to replace repetitive customer service, routine coding jobs: Altman
Elsewhere, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly said that customer service jobs would be among the first to be replaced by AI. This is because many parts of customer support roles follow repetitive, standardized scripts, which AI can refine and automate.
“I’m confident that a lot of current customer support that happens over a phone or computer, those people will lose their jobs, and that’ll be better done by an AI,” Altman said on The Tucker Carlson Show.
Altman also stated that programmers or software engineers who are stuck in routine coding tasks may face a similar fate. Altman said that not all programming jobs would be impacted, but those less about creative or judgement work could be affected.
Altman’s comments come days after the maker of ChatGPT entered into an agreement with the IndiaAI Mission to introduce OpenAI Academy in India, marking its first-ever international Academy chapter, and the formal start of OpenAI’s education and AI literacy programs in India.
The South Asian nation is currently the second-largest market for ChatGPT users. The OpenAI and IndiaAI Mission collaboration aims to expand access to AI education and training nationwide.
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