‘15% of global workforce could be replaced by AI’ : TN Ninan

On the agriculture sector, he said India could improve its productivity per hectare, stop protecting consumers at the cost of farmers, and invest more in labour-intensive crops such as cotton and rice among others.

Ninan pointed out that while our agricultural workforce is declining, progress in pulling workers out of the farms had been slow due to “mistaken” policy measures.

“Lower tax rates, subsidies to set up industries, relaxing labour laws — none of these have worked effectively to boost industry as manufacturing as a percentage of our GDP has remained stagnant,” Ninan said.

According to Ninan, there has been a growing imbalance between the employee and the employer. “Two in five workers in our organised workforce are contract-based workers… there has been a 5% growth in regular labour, whereas there has been a 23% increase in contractual labour employed in the past few years,” he said.

The Chameli Devi Jain Award was handed out to Ritika Chopra, Bureau Chief and Education Editor, The Indian Express, for her work that highlighted rewriting of history in NCERT textbooks, and her reportage on the Election Commission after which the Chief Election Commissioner was reinstated.

Greeshma Kuthar, an independent journalist, also won the award for covering ethnic violence in Manipur.