Analyzing technology aspect of India's manufacturing: The global context and future of work

Although developed countries lead in technological advancements and adoption, nations in the Global South are not immune to their effects due to increasingly borderless interactions. The extent of transformation will depend on the economic and technological feasibility in the less developed economies suggesting the co-existence of existing technologies even though the technology frontier continues to shift upwards. Therefore, it is intriguing to understand the relative significance of the distinguished technology levels in terms of their employment base and also for different typologies (e.g. employment-intensive, export-oriented, import-dependent, etc.) of the industry. In the backdrop of the likely non-uniform technology impact across regions and countries and the likely existence of the different levels of technology, the paper has two key objectives. First, to present a balanced view of the possible challenges and opportunities from the technology transition across the regions. However, the linkage between technology (as in innovation) and employment is also influenced by the sector where the firm operates. Technology response of the sector tends to vary due to factors including the richness of technological opportunities, cumulativeness of the knowledge base, or the means to protect the economic benefits of innovation/ technology. The view motivates the second objective to classify the broad manufacturing into sectors by different technology levels, viz., high-, medium-high-, medium-low-, and low-technology, and study their relative significance in employment, value added, export, imports and output in the manufacturing segment of the Indian economy. The present paper contributes through providing a technology profile of the Indian manufacturing by classifying sectors into four categories, originally based on the R&D intensities as defined by the OECD. The technology categorization takes into account the R&D spending as a proportion of the value added and output of the industry in the ISIC Revision ...