Automation to reduce about 14% of IT sector jobs in India

The growing trend of automation and the so-called internet of things could cost some 6.4 lakh jobs, mostly low-skilled ones, in India's IT and business-process outsourcing industry over the next five years, HFS Research has estimated.

That is a 28 per cent reduction from 2.28 million low-skilled jobs in 2015 to 1.64 million in 2021, according to HFS.

However, this will be somewhat compensated by gains in the high-skill jobs, as automation could create new positions, as well as free up existing manpower to pursue more creative work, HFS pointed out.

Mid-to-high-skilled jobs in India will rise from 1.11 million in 2015 to 1.27 million in 2021, a 14 per cent increase.

The net result will, however, be a loss of about 4.7 lakh jobs in India's IT sector, from the overall 3.39 million in 2015 to 2.91 million in 2021, HFS estimates -- a decrease of nearly 14 per cent.

''There are a large number of non-customer facing roles at the low-skill level in these countries, when you take into account the amount of back office processing and IT support work that are likely to be automated and consolidated across a smaller number of workers,'' Phil Fersht, CEO of HFS Research, wrote on 3 July, on its website.

A statement by Infosys CEO  Vishal Sikka has substantiated HFS findings. In remarks at an investor conference in March, Sikka is reported to have said that automation has helped the Bengaluru-based IT services giant save 1,100 jobs through the three months ended December 2015.

That trend is set to accelerate, HFS Research has pointed out by putting a number on job losses from automation worldwide.

Overall, HFS, which recently published a comprehensive report on automation and its impact on jobs, estimates that ''digital labour'' will be cut by 1.4 million jobs around the world through 2021. This includes a 7.7 lakh reduction in low-skill jobs in the US too.

Cloud computing, which allows businesses to rent storage and computing power on a pay-as-you-go basis has already changed the IT paradigm permanently. And even as cloud computing becomes increasingly mainstream -- Amazon Web Services recently opened local data centres in India -- software programs that can take over mundane, repetitive tasks are also on the rise.

Such programs are being combined to do ever more complex jobs, although anything like the Hollywood version of a machine-led apocalypse remains science fiction. Advances in a multitude of technologies including image and speech recognition, however, are expanding the outer bounds of automation every day.