New Delhi, Oct. 9 -- The Union labour ministry on Wednesday released a draft national labour and employment policy that stresses green and technology-driven career opportunities to ramp up earnings amid a widely reckoned view that job creation has not kept pace with the rate of economic expansion. The draft, titled Shram Shakti Niti 2025, aims to foster skilled workers ready for newer work profiles in a "future world" that will be driven by technological changes, including generative and other types of artificial intelligence (AI), the draft states. Creating enough "quality jobs" is a key challenge for the Modi government, which has envisaged spending nearly Rs.2 lakh crore over five years to boost local manufacturing jobs. Quality jobs are generally said to be those that offer decent wages and formal work conditions, along with some form of assured social-security benefits. Most of India's labour force are still tied to informal-sector employment. The policy "repositions the Ministry of Labour & Employment (MoLE) as an Employment Facilitator, enabling convergence among workers, employers, and training institutions through trusted, AI-driven systems", the draft states. The draft also states that the government would prioritise female workforce participation, social-security coverage to gig and platform workers and unleash a set of job-market reforms in three phases through 2030 and beyond. Implementation will proceed in three phases; the first will span 2025-27 and focus on "institutional setup, social-security integration, and NCS-DPI pilots for Al-based job matching". The next phase will cover the 2027-30 period for a nationwide rollout of universal social security accounts and skill-credit systems. Phase III will stretch beyond 2030 and will focus on consolidation, according to the draft....