Kamal Ghorui
Thanks to Mr Trump it is an open season for disagreements, and in turn agreements.
As Indian Prime Minister is a man of action and also of the moment, we are seeing a lot of action on agreements front. On the other hand, thanks to our opposition that seems to be desperately looking for fault-lines that they can find and exploit/expand, these agreements are opposed even though very little clarity is actually available on what is in black-and-white.
One of the key areas that every opposition party always aims for is agriculture as rural votes matter the most in Indian politics.
As air is thick with allegations and counters flying around, the centerstage is grabbed by agriculture and dairy sectors, but there is a Trojan horse that we are overlooking while discussing the trade agreements and that can be a dire strategic mistake.
This issue needs to be understood in a context that is unique to India.
Just a few years back, we were proclaiming from the rooftop that we are the youngest nation as almost 50 % of Indians are under 25. This was looked at as our strength, but a question is required to be asked in this brave new world.
Is a massive young population an opportunity or threat in a world of AI and robots?
In less than two years, AI has become a force to reckon with as it is now competing with humans on every front, and the direct impact of it is loss of employment of young humans across the world. Right now the threat is felt by techies but we are not really very far from robots becoming sweepers and nurses.
If this is extrapolated to Indian context, the same young population that we were expecting to turn India into developed world by 2047 may suddenly become a liability as it can easily mean a massive numbers of unemployed youth floating around in our society, which is a known fodder for social unrest.
If AI/Robotics gets a free entry into our economy through trade agreements done without giving a due consideration to the issue of employment of our youth, it can get lot worse than what opening up of agriculture and dairy sector can lead to.
It appears that we are ignoring some glaring facts that are right before us since a long time.
India, with its extremely cheap data, spread of Internet across all demographies and cheap smartphones have created a unique ecosystem for our youth. Today, the most attractive vocation for a young man/woman of India is to become a social media influencer, because of yet another strategic mistake we have made.
We have allowed social media giants to offer monetisation for content-creation.
The net result is that we have a huge young population that is already running after the carrot of free money of social media monetisation and losing habit of and interest in hard work. This makes them hopelessly incapable of countering any competition from AI/robotics if entry of the same is enabled by trade agreements.
The time for India is running out and hope of some homegrown Stratup-created technological miracle to save us is a delusion.
It may appear retrograde or backward, but we need to act to protect our interests not because this can mean an economic disaster. We need to act because this can lead to a social anarchy.
The steps that we need to take should start from multiple points.
India needs to reconsider the cheap-internet model as most of the information flowing on the internet highway is not related to business or education, it is useless content for sensual and sexual gratification.
Increasing the cost of internet connectivity may look like a tempting solution but it may be nearly impossible for any government to manage that miracle as no government can dare offend young voters in India.
The other option is a bit more doable thought it too will require enormous amount of courage for the government.
India needs to stop the social media giants from allowing monetisation of the content. Government is well aware that elements that want to threaten national security are able to pass on financial rewards to their stooges in India through this route, so there is a reasonable justification for such an action.
As stopping monetisation is not same as asking people to not host content, this move won’t have any impact on freedom of expression.
Such move (or moves) will help us save our youth from internal threat being created by global powers, but it will not be able to protect young Indians from external threat that easy entry of AI/robotics will increase.
India needs to really focus on what the trade agreements say about AI/robotics. Just as we talk about “No Compromise” on agriculture and dairy front, there should be no compromise on AI/robotics front too.
The world is changing fast and hence trade agreements can’t focus only on what is there and ignore what is coming.
AI/robotics tsunami is coming and we need to protect our youth from what it can bring to our shores.
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