Context
The inevitable widespread adoption of next generation technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence etc indicates a future of mass unemployment, and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few enterprises capable of providing minuscule job openings.
Some facts
- Five high-technology firms find themselves among the list of the top seven most valuable companies in the world, employ approx 700,000 people only among them.
- The Labour Bureau stating that India added just 1.35 lakh jobs in eight labour-intensive sectors in 2015, against a backdrop of almost 1.5 crore annually entering the job market
Impact
- May create of a plenitude of frustrated people who would be easy prey to the sway of radical nationalists and populists.
- It will decrease demand of low skilled labour.
- It will lead to concentration of wealth in few hands.
- It will create inverse relationship between economy and employment.
- It will create great demand for vocational education.
Way forward
- In india the informal economy employs more than 90% of our workforce. Efforts to structure the informal sector, by encouraging them to adopt modern-day tools and best practices, and by giving them adequate access to capital for expansion, would stimulate the economy and the job market.
- India has massive basic infrastructural capacity requirements. Government should plan and spend, along with the creation of an environment that would encourage private investments into these potentially large-scale projects, that could create immediate openings for millions in sectors like construction, India’s second largest employer.
- If leveraged to create essential and permanent assets, employment-guaranteeing schemes like MGNREGA would also effectively absorb a large slice of job seekers.
Conclusion
Redefining the existing economic planning, employment and resource-allocation models, to get them in sync with this technology-accelerated age, is the need of the hour.
