The Indian job market today is trapped in a strange contradiction. Private companies are enthusiastically embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to cut costs and boost efficiency. From automating customer support to replacing entry-level content writing, coding, and data analysis roles, AI has become the invisible hand behind massive layoffs. Yet, when the same companies list job openings on recruitment portals, they explicitly warn candidates: “Do not use ChatGPT” or “AI-generated applications will be rejected.”
This double standard exposes the deep imbalance in how technology is shaping employment in India. On one hand, corporates exploit AI to trim their payrolls; on the other, they deny jobseekers the same tool for improving their chances. The message is blunt: AI is for corporations’ benefit, not for workers.
Layoffs in the Age of AI
India has witnessed a wave of job cuts since 2022. According to Inc42’s Startup Layoff Tracker, more than 34,000 employees were laid off across 125 Indian startups in 2023 alone. The number rose sharply in 2024 and 2025. Global giants with Indian operations such as Amazon, Accenture, Google, and Byju’s have together cut tens of thousands of jobs, often citing “automation and restructuring” as justification.
Accenture announced plans to slash 19,000 jobs globally, with a significant share in India. Wipro and Infosys froze fresh hiring. Byju’s, once India’s most celebrated unicorn, cut 10,000 jobs in two years as it shifted operations toward AI-driven models. Even traditional sectors like banking and retail are now automating customer-facing roles.
The thread connecting these cuts is clear: companies are reducing costs by replacing human effort with algorithms.
AI for Corporates, Not for Candidates
Despite this embrace of AI, the recruitment side tells a very different story. Browse through job portals like Naukri.com, Indeed, or Shine, and the pattern becomes obvious. Companies demand candidates be “proficient in AI tools” or “capable of prompt engineering.” Yet, almost in the same breath, many postings warn against using ChatGPT for resumes, cover letters, or assessments. Recruiters emphasize they want “authentic, human responses.”
The contradiction is glaring. When corporates use AI, it is hailed as innovation. When jobseekers use AI, it is branded as dishonesty. This asymmetry reflects not a technological issue but a power equation. Employers decide when AI is acceptable and when it is not.
The Human Cost Behind Efficiency
The Indian workforce is bearing the brunt of this selective AI adoption. Unemployment among graduates is already at worrying levels. A CMIE report in early 2024 showed that unemployment among those aged 20–24 was 44.5%, the highest in recent years. Engineers, MBAs, and even PhDs struggle to find stable work.
When companies replace entry-level roles with AI systems, they choke the very pipeline through which young professionals gain experience. At the same time, by forbidding AI-assisted applications, they shut the door on candidates trying to level the playing field.
The result is a double blow: fewer jobs, and tougher entry into the few that remain.
A Skewed Technological Adoption
The Indian private sector’s approach to AI reveals a deeper weakness. Unlike the United States or China, where companies invest in developing AI technologies, Indian corporates mostly import AI solutions and deploy them to trim costs. There is little focus on building indigenous AI ecosystems, creating original platforms, or generating new categories of employment. Instead, the emphasis remains on efficiency, cost-cutting, and bottom lines.
In short, Indian companies are consumers of AI, not creators. Workers, meanwhile, are treated as expendable, caught between technology they cannot resist and restrictions that keep them powerless.
The Pragmatic Approach
If AI adoption continues on this lopsided track, India risks deepening its unemployment crisis. Experts argue that instead of using AI solely to replace humans, companies should integrate it in ways that augment human skills and create new opportunities. Training, upskilling, and fair AI-use policies for jobseekers must become part of corporate responsibility.
Equally, policymakers need to step in. Just as data privacy and consumer protection laws evolved with the internet, India requires clear guidelines on the ethical use of AI in recruitment and employment. Without them, private companies will continue to exploit the asymmetry—using AI when it benefits them, banning it when it empowers workers.
A Razor-Sharp Reality
The current corporate stance on AI in India reveals not innovation but hypocrisy. Workers are told to compete with machines, yet denied the same tools to survive that competition. In a country already struggling with high unemployment, this two-faced adoption of technology deepens inequality.
Until this imbalance is addressed, AI in India will remain less about progress and more about power, where the winners are corporations, and the losers are workers.
