Anantha Nageswaran publishes a ‘white paper’ on AI, automation and the Indian workforce

Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran released a ‘white paper’ on AI at an event held in Chennai on Sunday. | Photo credit: J. Johan Sathya Das

India’s chief economic adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran on Sunday released a privately written “white paper” titled AI, Automation and India’s Workforce: Who Gains, Who is Exposed and How Policy Can Shape the Future.

The article was written by Vidya Mahambare, Chair, Center for Research in Finance and Economics, 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 officer currently serving as Additional Secretary to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

According to the paper, the proportion of Indian employment exposed to AI has increased slightly since 2012 and the quality of this exposure has improved. The proportion of jobs with a real chance of AI complementarity has also increased, although in 2025 fewer than 8% of people employed were in these occupations.

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

According to the paper, the number of workers in complementary AI occupations in India was 46.3 million, compared to 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 steadily declines with age. About 29% of workers aged 25 to 34 work in occupations exposed to artificial intelligence, which is 10 percentage points higher than the share among workers aged 55 to 64, at about 19%.

The paper also said that 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 bottom with shares ranging from 16.8% to 20%.

Bureaucrats, industry experts and members of the academic community were among those present during the launch.

Published – 11 October 2026 22:31 IST