India’s IT sector is surviving artificial intelligence

Though the technology is making life still harder for many graduates

IF THE HYPE about artificial intelligence is to be believed, India’s tech industry should bear the brunt of any incoming wave of AI job losses. Before the breakthroughs that made chatbots functional, tech types quipped that AI stood for “actually Indians”, as seemingly whizzy tech was really the work of humans in Hyderabad or Bangalore. But now the sort of tasks outsourced to India—software development and routine business processes such as payroll—are among those AI is best placed to take over from people.

Yet evidence of job losses is not easy to come by. That is partly because data are patchy. Around 6m Indians work in information technology, according to Nasscom, the industry body. Almost anywhere else, that would be a vast number (roughly equal to the population of Denmark). But it is just a tiny slice, around 1%, of India’s workforce. It is also a group that statistics agencies find hard to sample, says Rosa Abraham, an economist at Azim Premji University. IT workers are rich by Indian standards and often live in gated communities to which survey-takers cannot get access. Zealous security guards turn away those without prior approval.

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