Will jobs go back to being the way they were when Indian firms recover after the Covid-19 pandemic?
An excerpt from ‘Decisive Decade – India 2030: Gazelle or Hippo’, by Kiran Karnik. Indranil Mukherjee/AFP
The concerns about technology consuming jobs through automation have been discussed. Yet, as noted, tech also creates new jobs. One area is the growing number of livelihood opportunities in the “platform” or online world. This is part of the “gig” economy, and ranges from sophisticated work (often for foreign clients) in developing software, website designing, translation and editing, to food delivery.
Estimates indicate that the number of food delivery agents in just one company (Zomato) in India is over 230,000, and the number of drivers in one taxi-app service (Ola) was estimated at 2.5 million in 2018. China’s more developed market has at least 5.7 million delivery personnel in its two main players (Meituan Dianping, backed by Tencent Holdings, and Ele.