Date: Jul 10, 2026Time:02:00 PM
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping labour markets globally, raising questions around productivity, employment, and workforce transitions. These concerns are particularly significant for India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy and home to one of the largest working-age populations globally. As India seeks to harness its demographic dividend, the implications of AI warrant closer attention, especially given the economy’s services-led growth trajectory and diverse workforce
While the services sector is the primary growth engine, its employment absorption remains comparatively limited. Within this landscape, India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have emerged as critical drivers of high-value services growth, contributing to employment, exports, innovation, and wider ecosystem spillovers across technology, infrastructure, and skills development. As GCCs evolve from cost-arbitrage back offices into strategic hubs for AI, analytics, product development, and enterprise transformation, they also reveal a central tension of the AI transition: growth may become more productive and globally valuable, yet increasingly high-skills intensive, employment-light, and geographically concentrated. This raises a wider labour-market question: how can India translate AI-led capability expansion into broad-based economic gains?
The implications of AI, therefore, extend beyond productivity and technological upgrading to broader questions of equity, inclusion, and access to quality work. Existing socio-economic inequalities shape how workers experience and benefit from AI-driven change. Differences in access to skills, education, training, and digital services, influence the capacity of workers to adapt to emerging forms of work and new economic opportunities. As AI adoption accelerates, the distribution of its gains also depends on the extent to which workers are supported through effective skilling systems, labour-market institutions, and broader social infrastructure that enable meaningful participation in the evolving economy.
To assess these interconnected challenges, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata is hosting a panel discussion titled “Governing the Algorithm: AI and the Future of Work in India”. This panel will bring together experts from industry, academia, policy, technology, and civil society to examine how India should rethink labour-market policy in the age of AI
The overarching question is how gains from AI will be distributed across workers, employers, and firms. How can AI-led growth be leveraged to expand access to productive and higher-quality work rather than reinforce existing inequalities? How can AI-enabled GCC expansion drive broader employment and regional growth beyond major metropolitan centres? How can labour-market institutions, skilling systems, and social protections ensure that those at the margin are able to participate meaningfully in the benefits of technological change? Addressing these questions will be critical to ensuring that AI contributes to economic growth which leads to inclusive and broad-based development outcomes.
Venue Address
ORF Kolkata
Welcome Remarks
Nilanjan Ghosh
Vice President – ORF Kolkata and Development Studies, Observer Research Foundation, India
Anchor Presentation
Arya Roy Bardhan
Junior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation
Speakers
Shreya Roy
Founder & CEO, Ecofunomics LLP
Richa Kothari
Economist, Pahle India Foundation
Dhritiman Mitra
Policy and Research Division, BJP Yuva Morcha
Anirban Sarma
Director, Digital Societies Initiative, Observer Research Foundation, India
Abhinav Roy
GM, Cybersecurity MSS, Schneider Electric
Soumya Bhowmick
Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, India
Closing Remarks
Kumkum Mohata
Research Assistant, Observer Research Foundation
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