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How young India plans to take on the machines as automation threat looms large

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India’s young population is aware that continuous upgradation of their skills is imperative to survive the machine onslaught.

World Bank data suggests automation threatens 69% of jobs in India. China faces an even bigger threat with its 77% figure. Other developing countries too run the risk of elimination of jobs. But are the young Indian millenials really worried?

Despite prevalent scepticism, the answer is no.

Everyone is worried about how the middle sectors in India are facing unemployment due to automation. The impact has been felt in the past few years and it’s only going to magnify.
But India’s young population is wiser, smarter and more future-oriented than possibly any of the generations before. It is flexible and aware that continuous upgradation of skills is the only way to survive the ongoing and upcoming machine onslaught.

As automation smoothly takes over routine work and the young generation works on being relevant, the low-skill jobs – where the bulk of Indian IT employees work – are the most at risk. They know that there is no shying away from change. The only escape is in finding new roles and in moulding themselves to become useful in the newer and advanced times.

Today, the skills profile changes faster than before, but at the same time, there is an ever increasing range of technology available to help the millenials adapt and learn better. And with machines taking on the mundane jobs, employment in the future will mainly be about skills like critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and imagination.


Also read: Machines will take over factory jobs as India is running out of humans


The present world is ever-changing, developing at a pace like never before. So fighting machines is evidently futile. The key to survive is to fight passivity. Doing something big and developing something groundbreaking with automation is as appealing as it sounds.

The young people understand that most jobs now ask employees to be adaptable about learning new skills as they go along. To ensure that they thrive in this great digital age, the education methods must bring a sharper spotlight to learning, experimentation and exploration.

Machines, robots and artificial intelligence products can either be a poisonous curse on the Indian economy or a potential cure. The choice is ours to make.


Also read: Shekhar Gupta, science vs technology isn’t like Communism vs RSS


Riddhi Goel, student of VIT, Vellore is the winner of the opinion writing contest on the eleventh edition of Democracy Wall. This was in a response to the question asked by ThePrint: Is young India worried about machines taking over jobs in India?

Democracy Wall is a monthly free speech campus initiative organized by ThePrint in collaboration with Facebook.

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