CEA Nageswaran Urges Youth To Pick ‘Trade Skills’, Says 'Era Of Software Engineer, MBA Over’

Published 15 June 2026 · tech

CEA Nageswaran Urges Youth To Pick ‘Trade Skills’, Says 'Era Of Software Engineer, MBA Over’ Published By, Last Updated: June 15, 2026, 13:38 IST CEA

CEA Nageswaran Urges Youth To Pick ‘Trade Skills’, Says 'Era Of Software Engineer, MBA Over’ Published By, Last Updated: June 15, 2026, 13:38 IST CEA V Nageswaran urges youth to focus on trade and human facing skills, warns AI may impact job market for MBA and software roles, calls for respect for manual workers. Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran urges youth to focus on 'trade skills'. Advocates for more respect for 'manual workers' (Representational image) Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said that the youth of the country should focus on ‘trade skills’ and that Indians ‘give little respect’ to manual workers while talking about the concerns regarding Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) impact on the labour market, during an interview with ANI. Highly sought degrees such as Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and Software engineering are no more as effective as in the past because AI could replace some of the work in those fields but not in fields where a human presence is required, Nageswaran added. He also emphasised that while India benefited majorly from the globalisation in services sector, fragmentation and insulation of economies is becoming more common. This makes it necessary for India to enhance its competitiveness in the manufacturing sector.

Further, he said, the country needs to address both unemployment and unemployability together. “We have no luxury of worrying about only one of the two issues. We must address both," he said, in the interview. Talking about how AI might impact the labour market, Nageswaran said that there are limitations in certain sectors in terms of how many jobs can be generated. As these sectors “will be necessarily capital-intensive and attract less labour or cannot employ more labour," he said. “But there is still a lot of space in the labour-intensive manufacturing and labour-intensive services, caregiving, culinary arts, cooking, and hospital staff, and sports education, especially caregiving for elders and counselling for special needs children. In all these areas, the world needs qualified and trained people, not just India. Those are all the areas which will not be impacted by AI. We need to create employability in these areas. And unemployment is, we should call it a livelihood problem," he explained. Contrasting Indians’ attitude with those of some European nations, the Chief Economic Advisor said we give “little respect" to manual workers. Indians need to change their attitude with respect to welders, plumbers, electricians, et cetera like people in Switzerland, Japan, Korea, and even China do.