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Fear of technology continues, who is to gain or lose

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CIOL Bureau
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Sreekumar R



THIRUVANTHAPURAM: Tech phobia or the fear of technology is common phenomena even in the present day context. In a government run chit fund company in Kerala, employees organizations have ensured that computerization can take place only after their demands have been accepted including release of two increments. Even when small retail shops have at least one PC these days, a profitably run Kerala State Financial Enterprises Ltd. (KSFE) has the unique distinction of not having a single PC in its branch offices.

This is happening even when the workload is so huge that an employee in KSFE does the work of two employees on an average. A few years back in certain hill station areas in Tamil Nadu the State Electricity Board decided to automate the switching on and off of street lights using a small electronic device developed by Telics, a government run co-operative firm in Thiruvananthapuram.

As many as 500 such micro-controller devices were installed which would automatically detect the weather condition and switch on and off the street light between 5 p.m. and 6 am. The electricity board had opted for this mechanism as linemen most often failed to switch on and off the lights at the designated time. However, the strong workforce saw it as a threat and began to sabotage the system forcing the utility to discontinue the arrangement, according to K Prabhakaran Nair, Executive Director, Telics.



The deployment of electronic ticketing machines in state run buses in Kerala is expected to lessen the back office operations related to preparation of journey bills, C-forms, etc. thereby making as much as 500 to 600 jobs redundant in the long run. The employees unions are aware of this but the insight that the corporation has to become, lean, mean and efficient to survive seems to have dawned on them. The corporation in the red would infuse Rs 4 crore for the project that is expected to make it more efficient and profitable in the long run.

In Kerala, the leftists had vehemently opposed computers in the eighties and early nineties. However, in the late nineties, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government led by EK Nayanar himself took a number of initiatives for deployment of IT in government sector apart from promoting private investment. However, in the early stages, e-governance meant buying computers as stand alone and using it as a `glorified type writer' with the result that none benefited.

The most likely victims of automation are the white collar and blue collar employees in any organization. In a Kendriya Vidyalaya school in Thiruvananthapuram the bells are no longer struck by the peons but by intelligent machines running on micro-controllers. The management said that it has no intention to do away with peons but it would re-deploy them for more useful activities. However, when automation works well for routine jobs the chances of retirement vacancies being filled are remote in many organizations.

When many government agencies have off late shown a fancy to catch on the IT bandwagon, Kerala's largest recruiting agency, Kerala Public Service Commission (KPSC) that conducts recruitment for the posts ranging from peon to deputy collector is approaching computerization with cautious optimism. "We plan to deploy IT only to supplement human labor and do not see it as a panacea to cure all the ills of the system," according to M Gangadhara Kurup, Chairman, KPSC.

KPSC has been provided plan funds of Rs 4 crore for IT deployment which it intends to do in a phased manner in the next three years. It is spending Rs 80 lakh in the second phase this year. Computerization of KPSC, that has a employee strength of 1,560, was not entirely smooth. At least one employees association continues to resist IT fearing it could affect their employment. "If applications are processed faster they fear they would lose their jobs, so more the backlog of applications more secure they feel," Kurup said.

Recently applicants for probationary engineer post at public sector Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), Bangalore were asked to submit their applications online and received intimation for written test through mail. As many as 1.5 lakh applications were processed electronically leading to huge saving of man-hours.



For a company whose core competency is developing critical applications for the defense spending time, energy and human effort on processing of application forms is not at all justified in the Information Age. Before introducing `e-goveranance', organizations spent a whole lot of human labor in processing of applications for each post.

The computer for many has become the ‘inevitable evil'. But isolated grumbling against the old number-crunching machine is still heard from many walks of life. Many people warn that you can ignore technology only at your peril. Many times technology doesn't have a human face. It has displaced human labor in many places despite the fact that they don't have emotion or their intelligence is insignificant compared to ours.



They suffer no boredom and do repetitive jobs without strike -- the plus points. White collar and blue collar jobs might be on the way out, but IT era has brought with itself a huge demand for skilled workers-- be it in software applications, embedded systems, hardware design, testing, implementation and so on. Projects such as electronic ticketing machines or automated bell system or public electric switching system brings with it opportunities for new entrepreneurs and technologists. But, how many can live up to the highly skilled requirements of the new age industries is something to be seen. That would explain to a large extent the nature of future unemployment and its intensities.

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