Generative AI and the Next Productivity Transformation
How large models are rewriting task design, wages and firm organisation in India.
Generative AI is moving from experiment to production in Indian services, software and business-process work. The near-term effect is not mass displacement but a reshaping of tasks: drafting, coding, customer operations and research support are being unbundled.
Firms that treat models as a complement to skilled labour — with data governance, evaluation and human review — are seeing faster cycle times. Those that bolt tools onto unchanged processes capture little.
What the evidence shows
Early firm surveys point to gains in document-heavy work and uneven uptake in smaller enterprises. The policy question is whether productivity lifts remain concentrated in a few platforms or diffuse through skilling, compute access and competition.
India’s digital public infrastructure lowers some adoption costs. It does not automatically solve measurement, intellectual-property or labour-transition problems.
