Prime Minister Narendra Modi often sums up his economic priorities as “jobs, jobs, jobs”. It is not hard to see why. India’s swelling, youthful workforce is often viewed as a national strength, but it means work must be found for more than 10m poorly trained youngsters a year for the next two decades.

Hence, Mr Modi is straining to attract global manufacturers, a theme he will push during his first visit to Britain next month. At home, he cajoles industrialists to invest in new factories, with a particular focus on labour-intensive sectors such as consumer electronics. Yet there is good evidence to suggest that this jobs push will prove to be tough going, not least given a recent spike in spending on robots.

Take Varroc Engineering, a midsize auto supplier. Its factories churn out plastics and lights for carmakers such as Ford and Jaguar Land Rover. Owner Tarang Jain says his business is growing rapidly. But rather than rapidly expanding his 3,000 or so permanent staff, he plans a big increase in robots instead. “My only worry is we haven’t automated quickly enough,” he says.

Mr Jain is not alone. Ford opened a $1bn factory in India this year, while GM last month announced plans to spend $1bn improving an existing plant. These facilities are as advanced as any in the world, belying India’s reputation as a manufacturing basket case. But they reach that level by packing factory floors with brightly coloured robotic arms, and keeping staff to a minimum.

Indian manufacturers often complain about their difficulties finding inexpensive, skilled labour. Wage demands have risen over recent years, while the cost of capital goods has fallen. Restrictive labour rules make it painfully hard to fire full-time workers.

Companies rely on temporary staff to guard against the ups and downs of the economic cycle, only to find them unreliable and unproductive. Industrial robots get around these problems — a record 2,100 were bought in India last year, according to the International Federation of Robotics. That is far below the 57,000 sold in China, the world’s leading buyer. But India’s market is still set to increase threefold by 2018, providing brisk new business to robot makers such as Japan’s Fanuc and Switzerland’s ABB.

This need not be a bad thing. Robots can help Indian companies improve quality and productivity, so they can grab more of global supply chains. Automation fears can be overdone — jobs lost to machines may be balanced by those added elsewhere. The idea that India cannot attract labour-intensive businesses took a knock in July, when Taiwanese electronics group Foxconn, which makes Apple’s iPhones, said it would build a dozen factories.

Yet there are still reasons to worry. Foxconn founder Terry Gao is a fan of replacing humans with robots — he said this year that one-third of his workers would be replaced by automation. His company has also been vague on the precise nature of its Indian plans. Even if it ends up hiring up to 1m workers by 2020, Foxconn would provide just a tiny fraction of the jobs India needs.

Underneath there are wider problems. India aims to treble manufacturing employment to 150m by 2022. BCG, a consultancy, suggests 62m is more likely without big economic reforms. India’s manufacturing troubles are longstanding, but figures such as this make it a clear example of a global trend, which Harvard economist Dani Rodrik dubs “premature deindustrialisation”, in which emerging economies now struggle to build healthy manufacturing sectors.

At present, robots are a small part of this problem, albeit a growing one. Today, robot makers in India supply mostly to the automotive sector. But without substantial changes to the country’s stodgy labour markets and creaking education system, employers in areas such as warehousing and food processing will begin to reach for the machines as well. The risk is that foreign companies seeking inexpensive labour and weighing where to put their next factory will decide India is simply not worth the trouble.