On June 9th, 2026, we held a discussion with Nandita Haksar on her recent book titled How Robots Stole Our Jobs: Struggles of Suzuki Workers in the Age of AI (Aakar, 2026). The discussion was held at the India International Centre.

The prefatory comments made by Madhusudhan Raman on behalf of Class Notes are appended below.

We seem to be living through a period of seismic technological change. Scarcely a day goes by that the op-ed pages of newspapers do not feature commentary and criticism of the new technologies and their impact on various sectors. The shelves of bookstores are awash with new volumes discussing artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, the future of industry and education, and the future of work. Some of these books are hagiographies. They celebrate the triumph of machine intelligence, and with giddy fervour predict a future where routine tasks are automated, and humanity is liberated from the need to work. Others are more sober and cautious, and meditate on the social and environmental impacts of these new technologies, the outsized influence of corporations, and what all this will mean for our economy and our political systems. And finally, there are those volumes that see the new technologies as heralds of misery and enslavement, their authors outlining in vivid detail what the coming apocalypse will look like. 

It is in this context that I am very happy to join all of you here today to discuss Nandita Haksar’s new book: How Robots Stole Our Jobs: Struggles of Suzuki Workers in the Age of AI. Nandita’s book has, to my mind, three unique features that recommend it. The first is its focus on the actual lives of workers, who are not presented merely as statistics but what they truly are: young, courageous, hard-working people with vibrant inner lives, with dreams and aspirations. The social impact of the new technologies can and has been discussed more abstractly elsewhere, but those discussions are often cold and impersonal. Through Nandita’s book it assumes a deeply human form. The second is its careful documentation of the process by which the workers realised that they were being gradually replaced by robots. This is a complicated story that involves technological development, corporate greed, and changing legal frameworks, but we are offered in this book a new window into this story: how this realisation develops against the backdrop of an ongoing labour struggle. The third distinguishing feature is, I think, the optimism of will underlying the narrative. Her interlocutors (or perhaps I should say Nandita herself, through her interlocutors) underscore the importance of organised struggle and solidarity. That, in these times of fraying and fragmentary social ties, is a lesson I think we could all do with.