93,000 jobs gone.

93,000.

That was the number in The Economic Times today.

93,000 people lost jobs or roles to AI in India in FY26. Those are only the visible numbers — the layoffs large enough to make headlines. For every known company that let people go because of AI, there may well be two others that did it quietly.

That number should worry India. It certainly worries me.

For one, I may well end up being one of the 93,000 someday. Second, I worry about where those 93,000 people go next, and whether India’s economy can absorb them fast enough into other sectors. Third, I worry about young people entering a world already shaped by war, instability, slowing opportunity and now an accelerating skills disruption. By the time retraining is complete, AI may already have moved ahead again.

And finally, I worry whether we are slowly setting ourselves up for social strain at scale.

As the Government of India, my single greatest direction of effort would be employment. India has 1.4 billion people. A population of that scale needs productive work, income, mobility and the ability to build a better future. People need to earn, spend, save, invest and contribute to the economy in a meaningful way.

Companies, meanwhile, exist for profit. They are not charitable trusts. Their job is to create wealth, improve efficiency and maximize output. AI does exactly that after the initial investment. It does not tire. It does not negotiate. It does not have moods, politics, fatigue or human inconsistency.

And AI will almost certainly become one of the major productivity engines driving India toward a $5 trillion economy.

And yet.

AI may well help drive GDP growth toward 10% a year — but increasingly without proportional employment growth alongside it. That is the real disruption here. 

Jobless growth: as a parent, it keeps me awake at night. 

Because if AI creates jobless growth at scale, where do the 93,000 of this year and the millions coming go?