Hyderabad: Automation is there since several decades in this country. How automation was causing job losses was shown in the movie “Naya Daur” directed by Late Shri B.R.Chopra. The lead actor Padmabhusan Shri Dilip Kumar played a role as a “tonga wallah”.
The son of a “zamindar” of that village introduces a “Bus” service as an alternate mode of transport to tongas. That one bus ruins many livelihoods of tonga wallah’s in that village. Then, Dilip Kumar, as a hero in that movie, showed the fighting spirit to stay competent to work with machines, gadgets, and technology.
Now due to this ongoing pandemic, “automation” is taking place faster than in pre-covid days.
As we know, due to the Corona crisis, many people lost their jobs across the globe. Also, add-on automation further cut many jobs and caused massive job losses.
Additionally, it has been observed that increasing usage of robots in the automotive sector, especially in assembly lines leads to a reduction in the workforce in automotive plants. Moreover, restaurants are increasingly spending money to adopt robots as new servants by replacing humans as servants to reduce the labour count. Even some schools are thinking to have a robot as a schoolteacher to teach science and mathematics subjects, as well as to handle tutorial classes for the students.
Similarly, the service industry like financial brokerage, financial research, financial markets, insurance companies are also investing in robot financial advisors etc. Moreover, automation using robots, chatbots are delivering 24x7 quality and timely services to their customers.
Bloomberg has a chatbot which works 24x7 in solving customer grievances. Many other companies are investing in chatbots to deliver customer solutions. This made the other companies think about investing in automation.
Growing automation in the initial phase may be a significant threat to human capital, but in the long run, it will create new job opportunities. If we remember, during the time when computers were introduced in the country there were strikes, rallies against computers and technology. Now we see that computers are everywhere. Similarly, when cellphones /smartphones were introduced, again the same kind of threat to some organizations, but now mobile phones are at every nook and corner of the country.
Now many companies are thinking about reducing human intervention in daily business needs to protect from Corona and other pandemics. At the same time, automation-based business models might create an immense growth in the business.