Since many decades, our country has been highlighting low labour cost factor. We have also been attributing our economic growth to this. I think time has come to look at the matter from a different perspective. The best way to anticipate the future is to analyze the past.
Historically low cost labour was attractive in three major sectors – Industry, Agriculture and Construction. And these were the country’s growth engines since many decades till the IT industry boomed.
Industry was the first to get rid of the labour factor in the name of productivity. Since the inception of automation, industry realized that low cost labor is an expensive proportion. The biggest plus with the automation was its predictability and consistency. In our country, we replicated this trend in last few decades. In all types of industry, the prime focus has been reduction in labour force.
More recent changeover I observe in our country is in the construction sector. Not many years back, pumping concrete were not even in our wildest imagination. And now premix concrete, heavy construction machineries are the norms of the day. We have realized that low cost labour can’t keep pace with rapidly growing demand. Industry has also realized that deployment of machinery is much more profitable compared to sticking to the old philosophy.
The only sector, which is still dependant on human labour in our country, is Agriculture. And we know our productivity figures are very low compared to world benchmarking figures. Within the country, western side is doing better compared to eastern side because of use of machinery. To keep pace with the ever-increasing demand, very soon we will see a major shift in the way we do firming.
Now let us come to the youngest sector – IT and ITES. Yes, till now we are enjoying the fruit of low cost labour in the global arena. But have we not seen migration of job to newer destinations? Frankly speaking, “low” is always is in comparative terms and there will always be someone “lower” than us in another corner of the world. And as someone said – “an IT job can go to any corner of the world where Internet connection goes”.
The bottom line is – we can’t survive with this “Low Cost” tag in coming decades. Shifting our focus on terms like “Efficiency”, “Productivity”, “Knowledge”, “Skill” etc. will pay much better dividends.
I always believe that “we perform the way our performance is measured”. Time has come to change our country’s “USP”. For a prosperous future, the faster we change the better.
Historically low cost labour was attractive in three major sectors – Industry, Agriculture and Construction. And these were the country’s growth engines since many decades till the IT industry boomed.
Industry was the first to get rid of the labour factor in the name of productivity. Since the inception of automation, industry realized that low cost labor is an expensive proportion. The biggest plus with the automation was its predictability and consistency. In our country, we replicated this trend in last few decades. In all types of industry, the prime focus has been reduction in labour force.
More recent changeover I observe in our country is in the construction sector. Not many years back, pumping concrete were not even in our wildest imagination. And now premix concrete, heavy construction machineries are the norms of the day. We have realized that low cost labour can’t keep pace with rapidly growing demand. Industry has also realized that deployment of machinery is much more profitable compared to sticking to the old philosophy.
The only sector, which is still dependant on human labour in our country, is Agriculture. And we know our productivity figures are very low compared to world benchmarking figures. Within the country, western side is doing better compared to eastern side because of use of machinery. To keep pace with the ever-increasing demand, very soon we will see a major shift in the way we do firming.
Now let us come to the youngest sector – IT and ITES. Yes, till now we are enjoying the fruit of low cost labour in the global arena. But have we not seen migration of job to newer destinations? Frankly speaking, “low” is always is in comparative terms and there will always be someone “lower” than us in another corner of the world. And as someone said – “an IT job can go to any corner of the world where Internet connection goes”.
The bottom line is – we can’t survive with this “Low Cost” tag in coming decades. Shifting our focus on terms like “Efficiency”, “Productivity”, “Knowledge”, “Skill” etc. will pay much better dividends.
I always believe that “we perform the way our performance is measured”. Time has come to change our country’s “USP”. For a prosperous future, the faster we change the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment