| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
NITI Aayog released a report on Monday (September 15, 2025) asserting that Artificial Intelligence-led efficiencies in industries could be key in contributing to an annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 8% in the coming years.
“Accelerating AI adoption across industries to improve productivity and efficiency” could bridge “30–35% of the gap” between the current rate of growth and the 8% target,” the report said.
Parliamentary panel suggests licensing requirements for AI content creators
The report says individual industries must leverage AI to introduce efficiencies; candidates that are primed for this, the report says, include pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, automobiles and financial services.
AI has reduced “the cost of producing the next molecule [for the pharmaceutical industry] by approximately 10 times and crashed the time that it takes — roughly 10 years — by roughly 50%,” Koshir Daka, a senior partner at McKinsey said at the report launch, adding that this could give India an opening to invent a clutch of drugs at a global stage in the near future.
The launch is among a series of events building up to February 2026’s AI Impact Summit, to be hosted by India. The summit follows the AI Action Summit in Paris and similar gatherings in Bletchley Park in the U.K. and in Seoul.
Google’s top AI scientist says ‘learning how to learn’ will be next generation’s most needed skill
“The impact that AI can have, not just on India’s economy but the global economy, is so profound and so significant that we need to take the leadership position in this area,” IT Secretary S. Krishnan said.
Skilling workers whose roles are threatened by AI is key, the report says, recommending “mapping job shifts annually, embedding lifelong learning into career pathways, scaling MSME digital upskilling, and protecting gig and platform workers.”
Former Nasscom president and NITI Aayog distinguished fellow Debjani Ghosh said in an interview with The Hindu that “you need to have a long term plan” on AI, and that “it can’t be a reaction to what the rest of the world is doing.”
“NITI Aayog consults multiple Union Ministries through its Executive and Strategy Councils to shape that planning,” Ms. Ghosh said. “We’ve called out very specific recommendations on what needs to happen in order to unlock productivity in these sectors.”
The think tank also released a Frontier Tech Hub, a repository of existing impact of technological interventions in various domains such as agriculture and education. Ms. Ghosh said the hope was to get more aspirational districts and aspirational blocks to see what kind of interventions they can apply to, for instance, attain better outcomes in education.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at the event that more States needed to take advantage of the government’s funding for equipping the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), present in every district, to upskill youth in AI.
Published – September 15, 2025 05:11 pm IST
