APL (Ajiken Power Lunch)

APL (Ajiken Power Lunch) is a lunchtime workshop open to public, including IDE staffs, visiting research fellows, IDEAS students, outside researchers and graduate students. This workshop provides a platform for presentation of any work in progress where we can discuss in either English or Japanese.

 Those who would attend a seminar are asked to announce yourself to receptionists on your arrival at the IDE and to obtain APL Organizers' signature on your admission card after the seminar.

November 10, 2017. (Friday) 10：30-11：45

Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization C23 Meeting Room 　

Diffusion of automation technologies and their potential and actual effects on manufacturing employment in India

The initiation of Make in India programme is yet another statement of the desire of the government to increase employment in the country through the manufacturing route. Under this programme, the manufacturing sector is expected to contribute at least a quarter of India’s GDP by 2020. However recent events and discussions have brought to the fore the pessimism that not much employment possibilities emanate from the sector due to the capital-intensive nature of the manufacturing sector which it had become for quite some time now. The worst fears on this issue have been accentuated with the increasing automation of manufacturing processes elsewhere in the world. Industrial automation is thought to have a deleterious effect on the creation of employment in different sectors of the economy, manufacturing included. This has given rise to an important debate, primarily in the context of developed countries where industrial automation has diffused manifold and that too over a much longer period of time. This debate, although originally in the popular press has now been brought to the formal academic table by the publication and influential and highly cited piece of research by Frey and Osborne (2013). Subsequently, one of the leading academic journals, namely the Journal of Economic Perspectives, organized a symposium on the theme ‘automation and labour markets’ in its summer of 2015 issue . Thereafter there has been a series of studies by academic economists and multilateral institutions such as the OECD as well. In the context, the purpose of the paper is to understand the extent of diffusion of automation technologies in Indian manufacturing and then analyse its effects on manufacturing employment.

Sunil Mani (Centre for Development Studies, Visiting Professor of GRIPS)

Tomohiro Machikita

English