At a recent event, Raghuram Rajan, the previous Governor of Reserve Bank of India had spoken about computers and bots taking human jobs globally. He had said, “The emerging threat is it’s not the guy in Bengaluru but the robot next door who’s going to take your job.”
The threat has already materialised for the workers at textile giant Raymonds. It is reported that robots would be replacing about 10,000 jobs at the manufacturing centres of textile giant. The company employs over 30,000 staff in their 16 manufacturing plants in the country. According to the CEO, the company is looking to scale down the number of jobs to 20,000, through multiple initiatives in technology. He added that a closely monitored team is working on the technology implementation models. The reduction would take place over a period of three years.
Globally too, robots have been replacing workers at several large organisations. Foxconn, a key manufacturing partner for Apple, Google and Amazon and the world’s 10th largest employer has already replaced 60,000 workers with robots. In its January 2016 report ‘The Future of Jobs’, the World Economic Forum had predicted that 5 million jobs could be destroyed in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020. These countries include US, China, France, Germany and India.