CEA Nageswaran Urges India Inc to Balance AI Ambitions with 8Mn Annual Job Needs

Chief Economic Advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran on Thursday has reminded India Inc that India needs eight million additional jobs every year, cautioning against possible over-deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to the detriment of labour. He also urged the private sector to “trust, deregulate and reciprocate.”

Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit 2025, the CEA reiterated that the government is shifting focus from public-led growth to private-sector-driven expansion. He added that trust, deregulation and reciprocity are key for India to avoid the middle-income trap and urged them to lead investments, job creation and compensation for a sustained capital formation

"In our path towards a Viksit Bharat by 2047, and industrial development for our country, we need to focus on a model which is highly capital-intensive. We need to make sure that balancing the labour-intensive and capital-intensive model of industrial development is of the utmost necessity," says Nageswaran.

"Going forward, in our country, while we understand that competitiveness and productivity considerations would require an increase in the number of GPUs, artificial intelligence engines being deployed, we are a country which has to create 8mn livelihoods every year at minimum, excluding agriculture,” Nageswaran highlighted according to The Hindu.

"And therefore, we have to have policies that rely on capital led growth but also policies — and this is not just the government, but policies in the private sector — that are able to focus on labour intensive manufacturing as well,” he added.

He further noted that India should not be overly consumed by global uncertainty, especially with a domestic economy where private consumption accounts for 60% of gross domestic product (GDP).

Nageswaran termed the growth estimate of 6.3-6.8% as a reasonable prospect. He further underscored a few silver linings for India including lower energy prices, favourable monetary policy and well distributed above normal monsoon.

“There will be some sectors which will be advantageous for India from the tariff perspective,” said Nageswaran as quoted by a Business Line report.