How technology is reshaping jobs

Pat Pressings is a Rs 1.5 crore component manufacturer near Cochin for the tiller industry. Its director Punnoose Kiran Prince is struggling of late to get employees to do skilled work. It is not that people are always unavailable, but most of them leave after short periods. So, he is now looking for an inexpensive robot to do some jobs, especially welding.

"Job hopping is a big problem with people," says Prince, "while a robot is always available. Its work is also of consistent quality." Prince would buy a robot when it is available at the right price.

Across the country, robots are making their way into small companies like Pat Pressings, mostly doing jobs people are not willing to do, like picking up things and putting them elsewhere all day long.

"Many industrial jobs are so repetitive," says Ajay Gopalswamy, CEO of the Bangalore-based DiFACTO Robotics and Automation, a systems integrator, "that people are not willing to do them even if you pay more." It isn′t clear, however, what other unskilled jobs are available to them.

The robots that make their way into Indian factories, large or small, will substantially increase their productivity. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the market for robots in India will increase from 1,547 units now to 3,500 units by 2015. Not a large number, but a start in the long journey to automate Indian factories.

"The main benefit to having machines replace humans is improved productivity, less danger to humans and, sometimes, better quality work or responses," says Hung LeHong, VP and Gartner Fellow of Gartner, a research and advisory firm. Use of large-scale robotics is only part of the story of automation.

Over the next decade, automation and other related technologies will seep into every industrial sector imaginable. It has already affected manufacturing in the country, especially in the automobile sector, contributing to the reduction of its employment intensity over the last six years. However, automation is not just about physical robots.

It is now touching all the major big employment sectors, reducing jobs in some places and creating jobs in others. It raises productivity in all cases, and will also likely create more jobs.

Automation will create problems too. Many economists feel technology is taking the world to an era of jobless growth, but an equal number also think that it will create more jobs in the long run by ploughing the increased wealth back into the economy.

"Technology reduces as well as creates jobs, but the two are usually not at the same place or at the same time," says National Research Professor RA Mashelkar. "So, we need to have smart proactive policies to create a win-win situation from a loss-loss situation."