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Big Picture at India Today Conclave
MUMBAI: The second session of the India Today Conclave 2018, The Big Picture, saw politicians Jayant Sinha and Sachin Pilot, economists Mohan Guruswamy and Arvind Panagariya and industrialist Uday Kotak debate the case of the missing jobs. While the politicians countered each other on job creation, Kotak discussed suggestions on how to create new jobs with a focus on the service sector. They stressed on the need to focus on education and link academics with education for imparting skills that make people employable. The debate threw up some startling figures—that demonetisation killed 20 million jobs in the construction industry, 57 per cent of the rural youth cannot do mathematical division.“We need a refocus to look at services. Manufacturing is a game that was played well in earlier times,” Kotak said. Some of the jobs of the future would be in leisure and wellness industry such as physical trainers and dentists.
The panel also debated on the role of the government and the private sector in job creation. Sinha was of the view the issue to be debated was not about missing jobs, but about missing data. He cited a recent report that suggested 6 to 7 million jobs are being created every year, if one goes by data mined from the EPFO. A number of jobs are being created in the informal sector, which is sometimes not captured in mainstream data.
Panagariya stressed that while jobs were there, the main problem was of people not being employed at full productivity and potential. “Talking of jobless growth is nonsense,” he said. The economy cannot grow at a robust 7.3 per cent if not for the contribution of new employment. The real problem is underemployment, and not unemployment, he added. While Pilot insisted that a government must create an environment that is conducive and positive where industry believes that its investments are safe, Kotak offered suggestions on how to transform the system to create more employment—a “deep rooted correction” in the education system, transforming the banking system to have a more efficient financial system and refocusing the approach to look at the services industry. Guruswamy agreed that skilling is key to creating more employment. An important sector, he said, was construction which employed around 55 million but was hit because of demonetisation. A unanimous point was on the need to skill the youth to make them more employable.
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India’s AI Future Gets a Neural Kick-Off in Delhi
NDTV IND.AI Summit on 18 Feb 2026 to debate governance, ethics, and India’s big-tech ambitions.
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is about to get a very Delhi welcome smart, spirited, and ready to out-think the room. On 18 February 2026, New Delhi plays host to the inaugural NDTV IND.AI Summit, a high-stakes pow-wow that promises to put India’s AI ambitions under the brightest spotlight yet. Billed as a deep dive into how artificial intelligence is already rewiring the nation’s economy, policy playbook, and strategic dreams, the one-day event is curated by NDTV in partnership with the Startup Policy Forum. At its core lies a single, sharp question: how do you unleash AI’s transformative power while keeping trust, equity, and sanity intact?
The guest list reads like a who’s-who of global AI heavyweights. Former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak headlines a special session on AI in governance, sharing hard-won lessons on how the technology is reshaping statecraft and decision-making. Joining the fray are OpenAI’s Chris Lehane, UC Berkeley’s AI safety pioneer Stuart Russell, and Google’s James Manyika, voices that will anchor India firmly in the international conversation on accountability, risk, and cross-border cooperation.
Beyond the policy wonks, the Summit rolls up its sleeves for real-world impact. General Catalyst’s Hemant Taneja and other top-tier investors will unpack how AI is redrawing the rules of capital, innovation, and long-term value creation. Separate tracks will tackle AI’s footprint in workplaces, large-scale adoption, productivity shifts, evolving job roles, and organisational culture. India’s digital public infrastructure, often hailed as a global blueprint for inclusive tech gets its own spotlight, alongside a dedicated segment on AI sovereignty: what does true national control look like in a borderless tech universe?
NDTV CEO and editor-in-chief Rahul Kanwal framed the event’s bigger picture, “The IND.AI Summit is about the kind of future we are choosing to build. India has the scale, the talent, and the moral imagination to shape how AI serves society and this Summit is our way of bringing the most credible voices together to define that direction.”
In a world where AI chatter can feel abstract, the New Delhi gathering aims to ground the debate in India’s own story, one that ties cutting-edge innovation to public purpose, domestic priorities to global influence, and raw ambition to responsible stewardship. Whether you’re an algorithm enthusiast or just mildly curious about tomorrow’s headlines, this Summit is India signalling it’s not just catching the AI wave, it intends to help steer it.
