Artificial intelligence is already delivering measurable gains for Indian farmers, tuberculosis patients, and agricultural advisory services — but the same technology risks eliminating call-centre and entry-level software jobs, the World Bank warned in its World Development Report 2026, released on 10 August. The report positions India as one of the most consequential testing grounds for practical, low-cost AI deployment in the developing world.

Gains on the Farm

India's agricultural sector features prominently among the report's most striking case studies. In Telangana, an AI-powered weather forecasting system enabled small and marginal farmers to adjust their practices in response to specific risk signals. Some increased farm spending by as much as one-third, while others recorded net savings of up to $560 per farmer, according to the report.

Ama Krushi, launched in Odisha in 2018 and now operating as Krushi Samruddhi, incorporated AI-driven advisory services after moving into government ownership in 2022. Its farmer base grew from roughly three million to more than seven million. A 2025 evaluation found that the service improved farming practices, increased harvests, and reduced severe crop losses — producing benefit-cost ratios ranging from 9:1 to 15:1.

Kisan e-Mitra, an agricultural grievance-redress chatbot operating in 11 Indic languages, handled approximately 2.7 million queries within 186 days of adding advanced AI capabilities — nearly seven times the volume that traditional manual processing could have managed.

AI in Healthcare: TB and Blindness Screening

The report also highlighted AI's potential to address India's chronic shortage of medical specialists. Cough Against TB, developed by Wadhwani AI in collaboration with India's Central Tuberculosis Division, correctly identified nine out of ten individuals who required a confirmatory test, based solely on the sound of their cough.

A Government of India assessment in Maharashtra found that computer-aided detection was both more accurate and less expensive than radiologist readings when screening X-ray images for tuberculosis. Tamil Nadu has separately introduced large-scale AI screening for diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of preventable blindness.

The BPO Risk: Jobs Under Pressure

The World Bank's optimism is tempered by a pointed warning. AI has already replaced capabilities that customer-service workers at an Indian business-process outsourcing company were performing, the report noted — illustrating how the same technology can complement workers in one context while displacing them in another.

The report cautioned that AI could foreclose an important pathway to middle-class employment by threatening call-centre positions and entry-level roles in software, finance, and business services. Countries heavily dependent on business-process outsourcing face particular pressure as the technology automates back-office work.

That said, the Bank's broader finding is that developing economies have more to gain and less to fear than wealthier nations. Fewer than one in ten jobs in developing economies are susceptible to AI automation, compared with more than one-third in high-income countries. Conversely, roughly one in six jobs — about 16.2% — in developing economies could be enhanced rather than replaced. 'Developing economies should tune out much of this noise,' the report said, referring to anxieties in richer countries about AI displacing white-collar workers.

India's Domestic AI Push

The report identified India as one of the developing economies actively building AI systems adapted to local languages and conditions. Under the government's IndiaAI Mission, Sarvam AI was selected to develop domestic large language models. The company plans models with 30 billion and 105 billion parameters, to be trained entirely within India, according to the report.

India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was cited as a model of digital public infrastructure — one that allows banks, financial-technology firms, and payment applications to share a common underlying system, promoting competition and reducing lock-in.

What the World Bank Recommends

The report urged developing nations to focus on adopting existing AI tools, adapting them to local conditions, and building domestic capabilities where resources allow. It noted that small AI systems can operate offline on phones and laptops, or be accessed via voice calls and text messages in areas where electricity and internet access remain unreliable.

The World Development Report 2026 is the World Bank's first comprehensive assessment of AI's implications for developing economies. The Bank concluded that AI could enable developing countries to achieve in a decade progress that might otherwise take a century — but only if accompanied by reliable electricity, affordable internet, local-language data, skilled workers, and safeguards against bias, misinformation, and excessive dependence on foreign technology.