COMPUTERISATION AND JOBLESSNESS

Unemployment is not growing only due to introduction of computers in government and private organisations. Some years ago a survey has been conducted on this notion. And the conclusion of survey surprised me. It said that ‘computers never replace the jobs, but they only add some more. If a company introduces computers, one person with the computer will then do the work done by three persons. In this case the additional manpower may be used for other purposes. Of course some times they may be losing their jobs, if there is no sufficient work for them. But at the same time we need one or two persons to maintain the computers. At one place if some body is losing job because of computerisation on the other hand some body is getting employment. So how can you say that computerisation leads to unemployment growth? Economists say that, each lorry manufactured in the country is capable of generating employment for 4 people - in the same manner 10 computers may generate one or two employment opportunities in the form of maintenance engineers, network engineers etc. It is only because of the computers that most of our Indian software engineers are earning their salaries in Dollars! Like a coin every subject has two faces. When compared to the benefits of the computerisation the ill effects are meagre.