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OPINION | India’s Invisible Farm Workers Are Feeding The Economy While AI Looks The Other Way

27 0
20.05.2026

Every harvest season, tens of millions of people vanish from their villages. They travel hundreds of kilometers across state lines, bend over fields that are not theirs,and return months later often without a single digital footprint to show for it. There is no record of their work, no proof of their earnings, and no trace of their skill. Meanwhile, the farms they work on are undergoing a technological renaissance.

In an era where AI algorithms dictate precision irrigation and satellite imaging predicts crop yields, India has built an extraordinary digital infrastructure around its soil yet almost none around its people.

ALSO READ: Surveillance First, Severance Next: Meta Tracked Workers to Train AI, Then Cut 8,000 Jobs

From Harvest Hands To Data Ghosts

This asymmetry is not incidental; it is the central challenge of building a modern agricultural economy. Agriculture absorbs over 46% of India's national workforce, a share that has surprisingly risen over the last few years. Among the estimated 402 million domestic migrants moving within the country, millions cross state lines annually specifically for farm work.

Yet, on e-Shram, India's national registry of unorganied workers, over 31.48 people are swept under a single, static label: "agricultural........

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