GS 3 Science and Technology Developments and their applications and effects in everyday life. Awareness in the fields of IT, Computers, robotics, nano-technology.
Introduction
The Fourth Industrial Revolution/Industry 4.0 is the ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology.

RECENT TRENDS:
- Continued Presence of Informal Economy: Nearly 90% of India’s workforce belongs to the informal sector.
- Contractualization of employment:
- The share of contract workers in total employment in India increased from 15.5% in 2000-01 to 27.9% in 2015-16.
- The share of directly hired workers fell from 61.2% to 50.4% over the same period.
- Gig Economy:
- It is characterised by short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs.
- It often involves connecting with customers through an online platform.
- In India, there are about 3 million gig workers
- Example:
- Delivery boys of app-based food
- consultants
- bloggers.
- Resource scarcity and climate change: According to the report Global Trends 2030
- demand for energy and water is to increase by 50% and 40% by 2030.
- Jobs will be created in
- alternative energy
- new engineering processes
- product design
- waste management
- re-use
The Drivers of Change:
Large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M) and the internet of things (IoT) are integrated for increased automation, improved communication and self-monitoring, and production of smart machines that can analyze and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention.
- Technological breakthroughs: New technological innovations bringing transformative impact on the nature work.such as
- Big Data
- 3-D printing
- artificial intelligence
- robotics

- Demographic Changes: the world’s population is ageing, putting pressure on business, social institutions and economies. The shortage of a human workforce has necessitated automation.
- Rapid urbanisation: The UN projects that by 2050, the world’s urban population will increase by some 72%.
- Rapidly growing cities have become drivers of a new industrial revolution.
- Shifts in global economic power: Power shifting between developed and developing countries with a large working-age population will attract investments and become a driving force for the future of work.
Challenges:
- Low Job Creation: Job creation has not been sufficient to absorb the growth in the number of people seeking jobs.
- As of 2016, 198 million jobless people globally who have been actively seeking employment
- Poor Quality Employment:
- nearly 43% of employed people were in own-account or contributing family work which is often characterized by low pay, informality and limited social security.
- Income inequality: ILO observes that although workers have become increasingly productive, the benefits of their work have increasingly accrued to capital income and to those at the top of the income distribution.
- Gender Pay gap:
- female labour force participation has increased
- the gender pay gap remains a major concern, women being paid 20% less than men.
- Digital Divide:
- Only 53.6% of all households have internet access.
- In emerging countries, the share is only 15%.
- Given the rapid technological advancements, digital divide remains a key challenge for skill development and employment opportunities.
- Impact of Technology on Employment:
- There are fears that technological development will lead to job destruction.
- Automation could be harmful for labour-intensive industries in India such as
- textiles
- finance
- construction
- hospitality
- travel
- tourism
- media
- electronics
- mining
- agriculture
- transportation
- entertainment.
- The Indian ICT sector is susceptible to AI/robots replacing workers in its major IT export markets.
- The retail sector, the largest employer of lower skill youth, is job shedding as e-retail accelerates and human jobs in logistics, warehousing and delivery services are being robotised.
Way Forward
- Universal Labour Guarantee:
- should pledge to provide a universal labour guarantee that protects
- fundamental workers’ rights
- adequate living wage
- limits on hours of work
- safe and healthy workplaces
- should pledge to provide a universal labour guarantee that protects
- Lifelong Learning:
- to provide a universal entitlement
- to lifelong learning that enables people
- to acquire skills
- to reskill and up skill.
- Investment to support Work Transition: Investments in the institutions, policies and strategies.
- that will support people through future of work transitions.
- Agenda for Gender Equality: in order to achieve gender equality.
- It is important to strengthen women’s voice and leadership.
- eliminating violence and harassment at work.
- implementing pay transparency policies.
- Social Protection: from birth to old age that supports people’s needs over the life cycle should be provided.
- Governance for Digital Platforms: An international governance system for digital labour platforms should be established to protect minimum rights of workers.
- Sustainable Work: Incentives are required to promote investments in key areas for decent and sustainable work- in areas of green, rural economy, small and medium enterprises
- Human centric business and economic Model:
- Distributional dimensions of growth
- the value of unpaid work performed in the service of households and communities
- the externalities of economic activity,
- should be taken into account
- Roadmap for India: India should adopt Chard Dham Roadmap for steering technological change.
- Gyaan Dham:
- a national observatory for scoping the tech-to-work equation.
- Databases on existing and future trends, sector by sector, needs to be created.
- Kaushalya Dham:
- It means nurturing “human capabilities” for Tech-Economy 4.0 work.
- To meet labour market needs, potential skill gaps must be closed through the NEP and comprehensive training infrastructure.
- Suniyojan Dham: It involves transformative investments in multi-stakeholder ecosystems to empower the youth and women through future-of-work transitions.
- Samajik Nyaya Dham:
- means ensuring a just transition through a new social compact among all stakeholders and a universal social protection floor.
- human-centred and equity-based approach in future labour market policies and standards is needed.
- Upakram Dham:
- It involves taking special initiatives enabling India to leverage the world’s third-largest ICT workforce to pole-vault into Tech4 excellence.
- critical assets:
- India’s diversity
- scale for neural net
- data richness
- huge base of engineers
- mathematicians and coders of AI available or trainable at scale
- decent ecosystems in ICT metros.
Conclusion
The fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 has become quite a buzzword. Economies across the globe are all set to adopt it and India is also treading the path in its own way.