Social impacts of technological advancements, and what governments could do about them

Technology has transformed our lives irreversibly. Be it trains, automobiles, aeroplanes, computers and so much more, for much of the world’s population surviving without technology is literally unimaginable.

The last few decades have made transformative technology available to large percentages of populations across the world. What were fascinating concepts a few decades ago have been commercialised and are available today, not necessarily expensively.

Much as technologies that surround us amaze and delight us, creating desires and demands where none may have existed some years ago, several comforts offered by technology come at prices we are paying and will pay more individually and collectively as societies and nations. Ordering books online reduces the need for bookshops and their sales people, even as it creates a few new professions. Driverless car technology, once it becomes more robust, will be commercialised, and will progressively shrink the demand for drivers, a fairly well-paid profession in larger Indian cities. Bots will reduce repetitive low skills white collar jobs. And giant leaps in artificial intelligence promise to devour some percentage of high skill professions such as medical and legal ones.

As the world’s population continues to grow, the broader need for employment will increase. How will young populations in countries like India and China be engaged intellectually once they graduate, or even when they are a couple of decades away from conventional retirement? How will individuals and families sustain financially? To some extent this problem can be addressed with the evolving concept of universal basic income. Entrepreneurs and governments, including the present Government of India are exploring this option. But it quickly raises the question of affordability and sustainability of an initiative of proportions as staggering as universal basic income promises to be in countries like India.

Secondly, this arrangement, if sustained, is bound to arouse social tensions. The unemployed and underemployed are bound to get frustrated and the employed taxpayers are bound to see themselves as a privileged, if not superior lot, and sooner or later, resent this eternal dole.

Thirdly, money in hand is one of the basic human requirements. It provides for food, clothing and shelter. But human beings have other needs. They need to be engaged intellectually and emotionally. A government may be in a position to provide a universal basic income to its unemployed masses, but it’s human nature to seek what is natural to it. People ensured of basic income without having to work for it will then look beyond this basic requirement and will still want to be meaningfully employed. In addition, they’ll desire family and social life as well as social stability. Universal basic income is just basic income and won’t guarantee much more!

Another consequence of widespread unemployment or under-employment will be increased crime rate.

Aadhaar can go a long way in contributing to social stability

The otherwise scam-soaked United Progressive Alliance must be credited with incubating Aadhaar, the unique identifier for all residents of India – the idea was long overdue for the world’s largest democracy. And the National Democratic Alliance must be supported wholeheartedly to make Aadhaar a reality across the length and breadth of India.

Linking every Indian resident’s key attributes such as age, sex, education level, caste, state and district of residence with Aadhaar could create a database that becomes the backbone of much of central and state governments’ targeted social investments in future. 

Progressively enriching the colossal volumes of all socio-economic data based on Aadhaar-PAN combination, and periodically churning their gut to evolve meaning out of it will give central and state governments deep insights into the kind and level of education their populations have, besides prevailing concentrations and vacuums of specific skills across regions.

More and more affordable technology for individuals and organisations, and impressive advances in artificial intelligence will lead to shrinking of India’s over all employment base. But technological advances are also a job creator. The new world will require an altered or completely new set of skills for new kind of jobs. A rich, Aadhaar-based national database will better prepare central and state governments to enable targeted availability of the right skills and steer their populations towards more secure (or less insecure) employment, also contributing towards reducing social turbulence in future.

Foolish, luddite or plain old-fashioned political arguments against such a valuable national database are doing considerable disservice to India. In the interest of the future of this country, one hopes they lose, and soon.