Science and technology continually dictate changes in products, processes, services and human needs. Jobs being closely linked to the quicksand economy are therefore called upon to imbibe changes. Universities and educational planners have to perfunctorily bring about changes in order to remain relevant to the market. Law, social sciences and culture too align themselves to the changing needs of the society while operating on the margins. In short, it is how the human civilisation marches forward and human beings live through epochs and eras. Modernity fades into the past to become antiquity.
Technological enterprises and the expanding service sector are transforming the post industrial economy to one of information based production. Businesses are calling upon schools to contribute to the economic development.
Just walk back memory lane three decades ago. It was an age of grinding stones, okhlis, blowpipes, copper vessels, gramophones, radios, typewriters, bicycles, lanterns, Mangalore tiles, mud water coolers, and alarm timepieces. Members of the Takara community often roamed through our streets offering to rechip our heavy grinding stones. Dhobis came home to take donkey loads of clothes. Acrobats and the bioscope carriers were a great source of fun in an entertainment scarce society then. Knife sharpeners set up their wheels around street corners just as Sikkalgars visited housewives every quarter to revarnish brass vessels.
New age appliances like mixers, blenders and instant mixes transformed our kitchens during the 80s and 90s. Dhobis vanished as did their donkeys from our cities. Today Court complexes seem to be the last resorts of cacophonic typists. DTP centres now combine hi-tech print shops capable of even producing canvases for giant highway billboards. Acrobats now survive on earnings from Dussehra melas.
Last month on a visit to Bangladesh, I was told that jute has no takers today. The jute bag industry is virtually closed. What happened? Economist Shafiullah at the Bangladesh Enterprises Institute informed me that jute bags were replaced by plastic bags. Secondly, orders for bags declined when ships acquired machines that pump and suck the foodgrains directly into and from the ship’s hull thereby eliminating the need for physical transfer of bags.
Nearly, 5,000 male tailors in Bangalore are currently jobless as the garment industry has made them redundant. Around 1,000 hoarding painters were rendered jobless as Bangalore’s billboards came to embrace digitally printed canvases during the last five years. They look neat, brightly coloured and display perfect contours of the models. A traditional zari workshop owner on Bangalore’s Peenya Industrial Estate told me that he employed 60 zari workers a couple of years ago. Today he makes do with only a dozen or so workers as computerised embroidery machines have replaced the need of skilled hands. A graphic designer plans the sari or lehenga (bridal skirt) borders on the monitor which are then fed into the computerised embroidery machines that roll out 600 metres of cloth a day. In the final analysis, tailors, painters, typists and embroiders of today are threatened with livelihood issues just as Takaras, Sikkalgars and acrobats of yore lost their jobs three decades ago.
Most EPABX telephone operators went out of jobs around the turn of the century when the old machines were discarded for new electronic phones. Banks need less number of hands today as ATMs are reducing the across-the-counter operations. Newsrooms no longer require proof readers as computerisation has combined the subbing and proofing operations.
Technology has its own pace. It is expensive when it is just out of the lab. Oldies scoff at it. Initially entrepreneurs and businessmen ignore it due to its cost factor. It then lures by its speed. Half appealing, it still has few takers. Then it comes with the offer of replacing human hands and energy saving. Temptation is then simply difficult to resist. Inevitability knocks at the door once it is embraced by the competitor in business.
To compete in the global marketplace, high technological businesses selectively recruit workers. These assertive enterprises locate themselves in areas that offer progressive schools and trained work force. All types of businesses invest two billion dollars yearly to retrain workers who lack computational and other basic skills. Government and business leaders forecast that without immediate intervention strategies the cost of increased number of students dropping out will cripple the economy.
The new technology is forcing downsizing in industry which is also propelled by the fact that smaller firms tend to be more efficient. Market forces push companies to operate efficiently, which means having an optimally sized workforce and technology determines what that efficient size is.
New jobs require people who are creative, flexible and adaptive. Future workers therefore should master such basics as problem-solving, synthesis, analytical skills and multiple communication skills.
As dependence on human hands decreases, emphasis is going to be on nurturing analytical skills. Similarly, there would be need for constant restructuring of courses and retraining of graduates in every discipline. Indeed, this would be an ever ongoing process. There would also be need for alternative programmes for potential dropouts. Educational planners would need to look into these aspects that are transforming the shape of the economy and its requirement from the schools and universities. Is anybody listening?
TRADITION NOT SPARED
Jobs are being lost even in the most dogmatic of the sectors i.e., religion. Cairo’s 4,700 mosques decided to do away with the hiring of a muezzin (crier) and instead connect their minarets to a centralised azan from the Ministry of Endowments. Now only a single muezzin can do the job of 4,700 criers. Even Dubai and Abu Dhabi are replicating the experiment.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam has introduced computerised tokens for the deity’s darshan which does away with hundreds of men regulating serpentine queues.
