Industry 4.0 and Future of Work in India

Jobless growth turning into job-loss growth and the recent evidence suggest that unemployment rate has shot off multiple times and the situation for educated youth, in particular, has become more severe. The situation is likely to worsen with emerging industry 4.0 technologies which are more skill-based and capital intensive in nature. The challenge is further compounded in the light of growing additions to labour force and inability to provide them suitable jobs. The inevitability of job losses with onslaught industry 4.0 technologies is likely to have big impact but much larger in the longer term. The evidences shows that pace of replacement of existing technologies is slower and selective in India and therefore the impact will be discernible in select sectors but it is going to proliferate in near future and that will demand new forms of knowledge, skills and competencies. In the emerging scenario, some occupation will die and others will emerge in newer forms. Clearly, this paper suggest that threatening of jobs is inescapable but this will require training-retraining of people in the newer forms of skills that is critical policy challenge to the government and other stakeholders such as companies and other employers.