India’s BQ: A Digitally-Led Economy With ‘New-Collar’ Jobs, Says IBM’s Karan Bajwa
This is a series of articles by leaders on how India can raise its Business Quotient.
This is a time unlike any other. There is an unprecedented change in the way technology is redefining businesses, consumers, ecosystems, and society as a whole. Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has defined this as the 'fourth industrial revolution' - "the fusion of technologies across digital, physical and biological worlds creating entirely new capabilities and dramatic impacts on political, social and economic systems." For the reckoning, we are not just moving towards a digital economy, the digital inflection point is right here and now!
At 70, India is a young nation - thriving and growing at an incredible pace. With an estimated expansion of 7.4 percent annually, the Indian economy has the potential to become the world's third largest economy by the next decade and technology is playing a key role in realizing the vision for India’s growth.
In a mobile-first, cloud-first world, technological disruptions are clearly evident today. Step out on to any city street in India, and almost immediately, you see the first signs of digital disruption: an Uber/Ola cab that offers passengers a convenient ride or apps that allow consumers to compare menus and order a tasty meal in minutes. Digital disruption is rewriting the rules in almost every industry in India today.
India has all the key elements in place to lead the world in digital transformation.
As industries in India remain largely unorganised, digital players can tap into this huge pool to rapidly achieve scale.
In addition, digital players need not be tied down to legacy infrastructure and can leverage technologies like cloud, cognitive, mobile to revolutionise business models and achieve rapid scale. Given the benefits, several businesses and the government have placed digital at the core of their vision and strategy. The Digital India program envisioned by the Indian government recognises the transformative power of technology and sees it as an enabler of change and driver of growth. Initiatives like Digital India, Make in India, Startup India and many more are designed to strengthen the IT ecosystem of the country for better governance. From delivering better citizen services to providing a new social security platform, there have been several positive steps taken to put India on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution – the one that India can lead. However, accelerated implementation of these programs (and more) and greater transparency is essential to make the vision of growth a reality.
The other key imperative for India’s success is the quality of human capital. The World Bank’s World Development Report that was released early this year points out that while digital technologies have spread rapidly across the globe, the ‘digital dividends’ or the broader development benefits derived from the use of these technologies have lagged behind. Agile, digital businesses and government will need a host of new skills, new world view and capabilities to grow and stay competitive to accrue the digital dividend.
In a recent IBM Institute for Business Value study in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit titled ‘Upskilling India’, only 40 percent of the Indian executives surveyed indicated that new employees recruited in local labour markets have the requisite job skills and believe that much of the nation’s current higher education system fails to meet the needs of students, industry, and society. Skills are emerging as the new currencies across businesses globally and in India.
With technology becoming an integral part, across industries and businesses, we will see the emergence of a new set of jobs known as the ‘new-collar jobs’ – jobs that combine technical skills in areas such as cloud, cognitive, security, data science etc. with a knowledge base rooted in higher education.
These new roles will require forging deeper relationships with ecosystem partners and acquiring in-demand skill sets.
Today’s rapidly evolving economic environment makes up-skilling and re-skilling, imperative across job profiles and sectors. A collaboration between industry and academia to introduce relevant curriculum (aligned to current and future industry/technology trends) along with training and mentoring will be extremely important. In addition, there is a need to shift from our single-dimensional, textbook-focused education due to which young graduates entering the workforce are not equipped with the practical and soft skills required to be employable.
So, the fear of automation or technology leading to job loss should not be the actual cause of concern. Technology adoption has historically transformed economies and resulted in the evolution of new types of jobs and not led to mass unemployment. The real issue that the current and the next generations must be mindful of is staying relevant!
The last word for this new paradigm to emerge as disruptors is to redefine the rules as we know them so far. That’s perhaps the only way forward to the promise of a digitally disrupted, not just a digitally forward economy.
Karan Bajwa is Managing Director at IBM India.
The views expressed here are those of the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.