Anantha Nageswaran releases ‘white paper’ on AI, automation, and India’s workforce

Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India V. Anantha Nageswaran on Sunday released a privately authored ‘white paper’ titled AI, Automation and India’s Workforce: Who Gains, Who’s Exposed, and How Policy Can Shape the Future.

The paper was authored by Vidya Mahambare, chairperson of the Centre for Finance and Economics Research at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai; Vivek Jadhav, assistant professor of Economics at the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad; and Vishnu Venugopalan, an Indian Administrative Service officer currently serving as Additional Secretary to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister.

According to the paper, the share of Indian employment exposed to artificial intelligence has risen modestly since 2012, and the quality of that exposure has improved. The share of employment with a realistic chance of AI complementarity has also risen, although fewer than 8% of employed people were in these occupations in 2025.

The ratio of substitution pressure to complementary work has fallen, but work under substitution pressure still outweighs complementary work by half. The share of employment in routine work exposed to automation pressure rose by 4.8 percentage points between 2012 and 2025, the paper said.

According to the paper, the number of workers in AI complementary occupations stood at 46.3 million in India, compared with 52.5 million in the United States and 20.9 million in Russia. AI exposure is concentrated among workers in the early stages of their careers and declines steadily with age. About 29% of workers aged 25 to 34 are in AI-exposed occupations, 10 percentage points higher than the share among those aged 55 to 64, at about 19%.

The paper also said the southern States lead in the quantity of AI exposure, but not in its quality. The five southern States have an average employment share of 30.9% in AI-exposed occupations, while Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are at the lower end, with shares ranging from 16.8% to 20%.

During the launch, bureaucrats, industry experts and members of academia were among those present.