IT Secretary Calls for IT-ITeS Shift to Sectoral AI Development
Union IT Secretary has issued a clear mandate to the Indian Information Technology and IT-enabled Services (IT-ITeS) sector, urging companies to move beyond simply adopting global Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions and instead focus on building specialized, sectoral AI-based technology.
The Secretary emphasized that this strategic shift is critical for ensuring that the rise of AI does not result in net job losses but rather fuels the creation of entirely new categories of high-skilled employment across the nation.
The statement comes amid growing concerns about the disruptive potential of generative AI, particularly its ability to automate white-collar tasks traditionally handled by the massive workforce of the Indian IT sector.
The Secretary’s call-to-action focuses on transforming this challenge into an opportunity by leveraging India’s vast talent pool to develop AI tailored for specific Indian or global industry needs.
The Strategy by Union IT Secretary: From Adopter to Innovator
The core of the government’s vision is for the IT-ITeS industry to transition from being a service provider reliant on external technology to a major global innovator and exporter of niche AI solutions.
Sectoral AI, which uses specialized data and models to solve industry-specific problems (e.g., highly accurate disease detection in radiology, customized risk modeling for local banking, or optimization for agricultural supply chains), offers significant added value.
The argument put forth is that the development, customization, deployment, and maintenance of these complex sectoral AI systems will necessitate specialized human expertise.
This creates new high-value roles, including prompt engineers, AI governance specialists, data ethicists, and domain-specific AI model trainers.
The Job Creation Mechanism
According to the Secretary, the job creation will not come from existing, easily automatable roles, but from these new roles responsible for supervising and evolving the AI infrastructure.
For example, building an AI system for Indian agriculture requires expertise in local soil types, monsoon patterns, and crop variations—knowledge that only local talent can adequately integrate into a model.
This localized development ensures that new job growth remains anchored within the Indian economy.
The government has indicated its willingness to support the sector through policy frameworks, data access initiatives, and fostering partnerships between academia and industry to facilitate this AI innovation ecosystem.
The challenge now lies with major IT firms to allocate substantial R&D resources towards this vision, shifting focus from pure outsourcing to intellectual property development and domestic technological leadership.
The success of this move is seen as vital for maintaining India’s competitive edge and securing future economic prosperity in the digital age.
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