Kapil Sibal asks govt to spell out vision for AI, steps to tackle US tariff war

New Delhi, Feb 11 (PTI) Independent Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal on Tuesday asked the government to spell out its vision for artificial intelligence considering the impact that it can have on jobs in India, while criticising the lack of an overall vision for the future in Union Budget 2025-26.

Participating in the discussion on the Budget, Sibal also asked about the preparedness of the government to meet external challenges in the wake of US President Donald Trump's tariff war.

"Today ChatGPT, DeepSeek are new technological revolution that is taking place in the world. Where are we? What plans do we have for the future. We expected the finance minister to tell us what do we intend to do to deal with these challenges," he noted.

Sibal further said,"We can't afford to apply AI (artificial intelligence) to our systems because if we do we will lose jobs that we already have. The result will be, where we have jobs we will lose jobs but at the same time we need AI because we can't be competitive in the world (without AI)." So, he asked,"What is the vision of this government for AI. All that the finance minister said was that we are going to set up 100 centres of AI but first understand what artificial intelligence is and what it can do." Citing the Economic Survey, Sibal said,"The Economic Advisor has said that as far as AI is concerned it can only work in certain sectors in the economy. It won't work in rural India. That is his suggestion. Nothing about it (in the Budget)." Referring to Trump announcing tariff on steel imports in the US, Sibal said,"We have certain external challenges that we have to face." He further said,"While the Prime Minister, who is going to America and will certainly have a dialogue with Trump, there are some imponderables that may happen in the course of time and as a country we have to be prepared for it." Giving a hypothetical example of the US imposing a 5-10 per cent tariff on software exports from India, he said,"What is the consequence on our software industry? Phenomenal. We will be non-competitive. How do we deal with that problem? These are the issues I expected the finance minster to deal with in the course of Budget presentation." Lamenting the lack of vision for the future in the Budget, Sibal said,"When a new government comes to power naturally people of India expect that government to give us a vision of what it intends to do in the next five years. This government has already had ten years and the delivery mechanism has been both slow and inconsistent." He further said,"We were hoping that after the eighth (Budget) presentation of the Finance Minister we will get some vision as to what the government intends to do. Before you do that you have to identify what are the the challenges in front of us then only we will know what will we do going forward." Sibal said the biggest challenges ahead for India is educating its children and giving them quality education while making them healthy.

The country cannot achieve its 'Viksit Bharat' goal without educated children "entering the mainstream", he said adding till the child is healthy and educated he can't empower himself.

Hitting out at the government for not easing regulations, Sibal said,"What did the Economic Advisor say in the Economic Survey? He said roll back regulations, do you see a bit of that in this Budget? No, no roll back of regulations." Sibal further noted that the Economic Advisor also said "Get out of the way, but you are coming in the way, you are always in the way." Referring to the Economic Advisor's statement to change "operating procedures", Sibal said,"What are these operating procedures? In India 'operating procedure is that a person is guilty till he is proved innocent', that's what the Economic Survey says. He (Economic Advisor) said change that to a person is innocent till he is proved guilty." Explaining why has the Economic Advisor said this to the government, Sibal said,"Because he knows that (with) the kind of principle that you are following, our big industry is running away. Our high net worth individuals are leaving this country because when you proceed against them you proceed on the basis that you are guilty till you are proved innocent. That is a very dangerous trend that's happening in this country." Participating in the discussion, Sanjay Yadav (RJD) said the Budget is not a blueprint for economic growth but to fool people and it is "not progressive but regressive" which has ignored youth, farmer, unemployed and students of the country.

He also said there is a misconception that Bihar has been preferred in the Budget but the reality is that the state got nothing and same announcements have been made since 2015.

Meda Raghunadha Reddy (YSRCP) said the shifting of tax burden from corporates to individuals needs to be looked at and individual income tax rate must be reduced from 30 per cent to 23 per cent. He lamented that while corporate profits reached 15-year high, wage growth has lagged behind. PTI RKL RKL ANU ANU

Source: PTI