Why keeping youth discontent in check remains Indian PM Modi's biggest challenge

"Manufacturing's share of GDP has gone down from 17% in 2015 to 14% currently. And manufacturing employment fell for five years after 2015 and has only now climbed back up slightly above those levels."Meanwhile, Mehrotra says, total employment in agriculture has actually risen by 80 million people after 2020, a sure sign of disguised unemployment. This is because workers in a fast industrialising economy typically move out of agriculture into services or manufacturing as seen across the world.All of these challenges have been compounded by the fact that the business model of key job-creating industries like software - a mainstay of the Indian middle class dream for three decades - has been challenged by the advent of AI.In a recent report, Wall Street Bank Goldman Sachs estimates that 8-12% of non-farm jobs in India are at the risk of being substituted by AI. And the effects of that are already showing.IT hiring has risen in single digits in recent months, unstable contract work is rising, wages have remained stagnant for years and the knowledge-based jobs that Indian STEM graduates took for granted two decades ago are no longer around in big numbers, according to Neeti Sharma, CEO of Team Lease Digital, one of India's most prominent staffing agencies.The The India-today-group" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="177749" data-entity-type="organization">India Today Group via Getty ImagesIndia's $300bn software industry is feeling the heat because of AI In fact a recent event of HCL Technologies, one of the country' biggest software companies, in Chennai was disrupted by hundreds of employees chanting "we want a hike" in unison, reflecting the frustrations of an industry that was once the golden ticket to a better life."Young graduates will have to rewire their brains to the new reality that white-collar knowledge jobs are going down. And education institutions will have to pivot to providing vocational skills rather than just knowledge-based learning. Because the hiring has also moved from degrees to actual skills," Sharma told the BBC.