Robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are part of the technologies driving what is being called the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0. Like all other new technologies which drove the changes during the previous revolutions, these technologies are disruptive not only to production processes but also to our social and cultural lives.India now ranks among the fastest-growing AI economies in the world, but is this something we should be proud of, or should we be alarmed?The Union cabinet approved the India AI Mission in March 2024, with a budget outlay of Rs 10,371.92 crore over five years. A NITI Aayog report estimates that AI could add between $500 and 600 billion to India’s GDP by 2035.It is clear that AI and robotics are no longer the stuff of science fiction; they have become a part of our everyday lives, especially since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, which brought AI into nearly every home. What is not clear is how this new technology will impact the vast majority of our poor people in both towns and villages.The media has published multiple reports on how AI and AI-driven technologies have transformed our lives, from housewives using robots for cooking and cleaning to people being able to magically write e-mails in English without knowing the language and businesspeople using the aid of AI to make investments.India is all set to host the AI Impact Summit from February 16, and almost 500 events have been held in preparation for the Summit. The stated objective of the Summit is to promote a future where AI will foster inclusive growth.Our government, like governments around the world, paints a rosy picture of our AI-powered future. Take, for example, NITI Aayog’s report, AI for Inclusive Societal Development (October 2025). It highlights how AI-driven tools can boost productivity and resilience for millions who form the backbone of India’s economy. The report also stresses that technology can bridge deep social and economic divides, ensuring that the benefits of AI reach every citizen.Let us look at the facts. We are told AI-driven technologies are sustainable and promote economic growth. But the facts belie this claim.The growth and expansion of AI is dependent on data centres which store vast amounts of data. The Union Budget 2026-27 provides for a 20-year tax holiday for foreign data companies using local data centres and exempts taxes until 2047 to attract firms like Google and Microsoft. Basically, it aims to boost AI infrastructure investments.Data centres consume unfathomable amounts of energy, labour and natural resources. For example, a single AI query can consume up to ten times more power than a basic online search, and training a large language model can use over 1,000 megawatt-hours of electricity, roughly equal to the consumption of several hundred Indian households.Experience in other parts of the world shows that when data centres are located in or near agricultural regions with overexploited aquifers, directly competing with farming for groundwater, water depletion adversely impacts agriculture.Data centres in India have already been affecting the environment. Cooling systems in large data centres rely on water-based technology, yet over 80% of the facilities today are located in water-scarce states such as Maharashtra, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu.In Bengaluru, data centres reportedly consume nearly eight million litres of water each day, even as the city faces extreme water shortages.A typical 100MW data centre consumes about two million litres of water daily for cooling, mainly groundwater or municipal supplies in cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, and Greater Noida. National water use by data centres is expected to reach 358 billion litres by 2030, up from 150 billion in 2025.While large data corporations are being offered tax holidays, there are no direct water mandates tied to the policy, focusing instead on investment stability.There has been almost no public debate on India’s policy to promote AI and what the impact will be on the vast majority of the people. The government has just been assuring us that AI will lead us into a rosy future where there will be greater social equality, better health and education for all.However, many experts on the subject are warning that this revolutionary technology might never deliver on its promise of broad economic transformation, but instead just concentrate more wealth at the top. Karen Hao, who will be attending the AI Impact Summit, writes in her book Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination (2025):“Over the years, I have found only one metaphor that encapsulates the nature of what these AI power players are: empires. During the long era of European colonialism, empires seized and extracted resources that were not their own and exploited the labour of the people they subjugated to mine, cultivate, and refine those resources for the empire’s enrichment. They projected racist, dehumanising ideas of their own superiority and modernity to justify – and even entice the conquered into accepting – the invasion of sovereignty, the theft, and subjugation.”India is inviting these giant corporations into the country and we have not even had a debate on the impact.Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize–winning computer scientist known as the godfather of AI, has warned that “artificial intelligence will increase unemployment while driving higher profits.” Hinton says:“What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers. It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.”It is the direct impact of AI-driven technology that thousands of Indian IT professionals have lost their jobs. India’s tech sector is experiencing silent layoffs, with projections of over 50,000 impacted by end of 2025. Companies are reducing surplus staff through performance-linked delayed career advancements, driven by AI adoption and business prudence. This trend signals a shift to skills management and flatter industry structures. And this brings us to the issue of skills management. The government of India has a programme in place to train youth in new skills to prepare them for this transition driven by new technologies.India is one of the youngest nations in the world, with more than 62% of its population in the working age group (15-59 years), and more than 54% of its total population below 25 years of age. The government recognises that India faces a dual challenge of paucity of a highly trained workforce, as well as non-employability of large sections of the conventionally educated youth, who possess little or no job skills.The Skill India programme was introduced by the Union government in 2015 to upgrade the skills of workers to prepare them for the transition to new technologies.However, this scheme has not achieved its purported goal. According to the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the Pradhan Mantri Kausal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), there are serious gaps in the implementation of India’s flagship skill development scheme. The report raises concern over financial irregularities, weak monitoring, poor quality control, and limited employment outcomes, questioning the effectiveness of the PMKVY in addressing unemployment and skills mismatch.Millions of youth cannot find permanent jobs and in various insidious ways robots have already taken over jobs, especially in the automotive industry.The World Robotics 2025 Report by the International Federation of Robotics reveals that 5,42,000 robots were installed in 2024, more than double the number ten years ago. Annual installations topped 500,000 units for the fourth straight year. Asia accounted for 74% of new deployments in 2024, compared with 16% in Europe and 9% in America.Moreover, sales of industrial robots in India reached a new record of 9,120 units installed in 2024, a 7% increase compared to the previous year. As per the World Robotics 2025 Report, India is now the sixth-largest installer worldwide, behind Germany, Korea, the USA, Japan and China.The government already has a draft National Strategy on Robotics, which was placed before the public in 2023. A National Robotics Mission and a National AI Mission have also been set up. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) serves as the nodal agency for robotics.Robotics and AI are closely intertwined fields. AI provides the intelligence that enables robots to perform complex, adaptive tasks beyond simple programming. Moreover, AI equips those machines with capabilities like learning, perception, and decision-making.Apart from granting tax holidays to large data corporations and offering substantial financial incentives to the industry to help it adapt to new technologies, the government has also helped capital by creating a flexible labour market where employees can be hired and fired at will. This has been done through various measures, including the new labour codes that will soon come into effect. Apart from other provisions, these codes make it legal for corporations to employ workers on a fixed-term basis without the promise of a permanent job.This means that the government has effectively dismantled the legal framework through which workers receive basic rights, such as a cap on working hours, mechanisms for dispute resolution, and, most importantly, the right to form trade unions and collectively bargain with management to negotiate better working conditions.The new labour code in India and the Shram Shakti Niti 2025, however, do not recognise the right to permanent jobs, and there is no protection for workers from extreme exploitation. Even more shocking is that millions of men and women working as gig workers are not even formally recognised as workers.Trade union movements in India have come out strongly against the new labour laws and have committed themselves to resisting their implementation. The central trade unions have called for nationwide strike on February 12 but they have not linked the issue of new labour codes with the technological changes and their impact on workers.In many countries, the trade union movement has taken up the challenge of the fourth industrial revolution and demanded that provision be made for what they are calling a just transition. In India, this has not happened even in the automotive industry, where the impact is most dramatic because most workers are already not permanent and do not belong to a trade union.A report on the Future of Work in India’s Automotive Sector observed: “A significant ratio of non-standard employment to permanent workers across OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and tier 1 vendors, with a bulk of the work on the shop floor being performed by workers in non-standard employment. For instance, a major OEM such as Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) had a workforce of 65% non-standard employment labourers deployed on their floor in their plant in Manesar, and Munjal Kiriu, a tier I auto component manufacturer, had 70% at their plant. This is excluding the number of trainees and apprentices, which are as many as 8% in OEMs.”Suzuki has now set up its gigafactory at Kharkhoda in Sonipat district of Haryana. The factory has almost no permanent workers.The workers did not fully understand why Suzuki had these labour policies. They attributed it to corporate greed and the company not wanting to share its profits. But in the course of their struggles, they discovered that this lack of permanent jobs was driven by the adoption of new technologies by profit-seeking corporations. It was only then that they started asking whether the robots might have been stealing their jobs.Will the voices of workers, farmers and IT professionals who lost their jobs be heard at the AI Summit? Who will speak on their behalf?Nandita Haksar human rights lawyer and author of several books including How Robots Stole Our Jobs Struggles of Suzuki Workers in the Age of Ai Aakar, 2026 (Hindi: Factory se Footpath Tak, Roboton ked aur me Suzuki ke Mazdur).