Sunil Bharti Mittal Sees The World Heading Towards ‘Jobless Growth’
“It is low growth, It is jobless growth”, as technology takes over, says Sunil Mittal.
Bharti Group Chairman, Sunil Mittal said the one thing that people are missing while talking about global growth is that the current phase is one of ‘low growth and ‘jobless growth’. Growth rates will remain low going forward and economies worldwide will see very little job creation – a serious concern for all politicians, both globally and in India. Mittal was speaking at the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit 2016 in Delhi.
This underlying weakness is the reason the International Monetary Fund recently lowered global growth rates, according to Mittal. The International Monetary Fund recently maintained its forecast for weak global growth and warned that further stagnation will fuel more populist sentiment against trade and immigration that would stifle activity, productivity and innovation.
The Bharti group chairman expects the U.S. economy to grow below 2 percent and the world economy to grow at around 3 percent, led primarily by emerging markets.
Anti-globalisation and anti-immigration forces are not helping the cause of job creation either, Mittal pointed out.
These are two very strong forces that are currently at play at the moment and that’s money for countries like India. What’s our capital? Our capital above all is our people. And if we don’t have access for these people to take jobs anywhere in the world which was the case and the premise of globalisation and to which India signed in and enthusiastically followed. Opening up of the FDI, opening up each sector and suddenly you are saying when India needs to get to the world economy, there seem to be restrictions coming in from places.Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Group
The trend of increasing protectionism aside, newer technologies such as artificial intelligence too are disrupting the job market, and will ultimately result in the displacement of several jobs, Mittal said.
Just one or two robots sitting there will do everything that requires to be done. You go into law firms and the maximum amount of law firm, the maximum employment is in the research assistance of people who are coming out of the law schools to help the senior accountants. We saw Watson doing a case 4 years back for the senior counsel. It was all produced by Watson, the computer. No human intervention. It was significantly more sophisticated than what anybody else could have produced. You can pick up anything from the world and refer to the case files and produce the best document.Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Group
Politicians and people need to start worrying about how to effect the next stage of job creation, Mittal emphasised. While celebrating the “massive march of technology”, it would be a mistake to ignore the disruptive nature of how these forces work. he added.