Is India prepared for fourth industrial revolution'?

The disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, automation and Internet of Things (IoT) have become an integral part of our everyday lives. They will, in the next two decades, create digital factories and completely transform the IT service business models, which will have a huge impact on the job market.

The rise of these technologies is being called the fourth industrial revolution, which raises concerns over job security as many people, in the past, have lost their jobs due to introduction of newer technologies. Organized by the 100-year-old think tank, Carnegie India, the Global Technology Summit 2016 on Tuesday brought together policy makers, technologists, entrepreneurs and academics to leverage technology disruptions for national development in Bengaluru.      

The panelists—Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the chairperson and MD of Biocon, Manish Sabharwal, chairman and co-founder of Teamlease and Wilfried Aulbur, managing partner, Roland Berger—held a debate on the topic, ‘Killing Jobs or Creating Them: Automation and Employment’, which was chaired by Sharad Sharma, Co-founder of iSPIRIT Foundation.

“India has a very different job challenge. The challenge is not jobs but productivity. Unless, we focus on value creation we will not be able address the economic challenges that we have,” said Shaw. Commenting on the impact of automation, Shaw said that the next ten years should clearly be about making the existing jobs more productive through technology.

 

Aulbur said that China is driving their economy aggressively to compete in the global market. The current automation rate in India is low, which will make it difficult for it to compete globally.

Though automation makes jobs more productive, it will take over the jobs of millions people. For example, the people working in airlines and travel agencies have already lost their jobs due to the introduction of different e-commerce sites.  

However, Sabharwal argued that because of technology innovation, the Uber drivers today have more secure jobs compared to other drivers. “We can provide social security by job creation and skill development. We need to be more productive, get rid of regulatory cholesterol and improve our human capital to catch up with technology revolutions,” he added.  

Shaw concluded by saying, “We need to upgrade skills and create more productive jobs. We need a transformative thinking and I’m optimistic about it.”