(From an editorial)
A study team on automation headed by Mr. N. M. Tidke, Labour Minister of Maharashtra, has reiterated, in its report submitted recently to the State Assembly that, without selective introduction of automated techniques of production, the ground will not have been prepared for creating job opportunities in the dimension warranted by the country’s long-term needs of employment. The team is aware that a suggestion of this sort will not be welcomed by those who are crying hoarse for a deliberate bias towards labour-intensive techniques as the best way to tackle the problem of unemployment. It has, therefore, emphasised the point that “it is, on advanced technology that we depend for the realization of the fruits of civilisation and it is for us to convert the same into an instrument of economic growth and social progress, organisationally feasible, individually beneficial and socially desirable.” Much of the opposition to computers, for instance, has arisen from a misconception of their role and the inept method of their introduction. The benefit from these instruments does not consist in large-scale displacement of clerical and other labour, force but in their superior computational ability in terms of both quality and quantity, which helps directly and indirectly to expand investment and therefore employment opportunities. If this idea has been difficult to sell to Indian trade unions, it may be because proper homework has not been done before introducing computers. The Tidke team finds that “the situation is not generally satisfactory in respect of quality and types of computer applications adopted, the available training facilities, the attitude of labour and management towards computerisation and above all our total approach to problem solving in this sector of the economy.” A good deal of preliminary work to overcome these defects should therefore be undertaken.
The stress has to be on the use of computers of the right type. The task cannot be postponed any longer. Some of the big public sector undertakings have already begun to feel the need for such machines. The Hindustan Steel Limited has found that the quality of the ore fed into its blast furnaces is not the same every day and that electronic devices make it easy to control the temperature and other factors in order that a finished product of standardized quality is obtained from ores of diverse quality. Other government undertakings like the Indian Telephone Industries and Hindustan Machine Tools have also been pressing for the introduction of computers for firming up the efficiency of their production control programmes. Two points deserve notice in this connection: the first is that the number of sophisticated business machines that the country has is only 100 against 40,000 in the United States and 1,750 in the Soviet Union. The second point which follows from this is that, unless India is able to make up the leeway, costs will soon prove too uncompetitive making it more and more difficult for our exporters to hold their markets abroad.
