Fired Indian tech workers turn to chatbots for counselling

In this photograph taken on December 13, 2016, an employee of Indian IT security solutions company Innefu Labs works at their offices in New Delhi. In the darkened offices of a tech start-up, a handful of computer engineers sift through a mountain of intelligence data that would normally be the work of a small army of Indian security agents. / AFP PHOTO / SAJJAD HUSSAIN / TO GO WITH AFP STORY: India-Technology-Security-Cyber, FOCUS by Megha BAHREE

For months Lovkesh Joshi was quietly terrified of losing his job as a manager at a top Indian tech services company. Clients were cutting their budgets, prompting his bosses to fire dozens of colleagues. 

His manager told him not to worry, but it was hard not to when experts were predicting that millions of the country’s IT workers would be eliminated in the coming years. “My head was full of 'yaar, kya honewalla hai?,'” says Joshi, using a Hindi expression that means “what’s going to happen?”