Time apt to skill, re-skill Indian workforce to tap into Industry 4.0: official

MUMBAI, March 14 (Xinhua) -- As India moves towards becoming a 5-trillion-U.S. dollar economy over the next five years, the time is now appropriate to skill and re-skill the workforce to grasp and align their expertise with the requirements of Industry 4.0, said a government official on late Wednesday.

"The debate around embracing Industry 4.0 and the job losses that it could entail had settled in favor of new and more jobs that the new Industry paradigm would create," said Atul Chaturvedi, additional secretary of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade at India's Commerce Ministry.

"This had emboldened the government to give a fillip to adopt and assimilate the best standards from the expertise available from within and outside the country and march ahead to impart competitiveness to manufacturing and services."

He was speaking at the symposium on Productivity Growth with Industry 4.0 Standardisation organized by Industry body FICCI, jointly with the National Productivity Council and Asian Productivity Organization.

The statement by the government official assumes significance as IBM chief Ginny Rometty on Wednesday said India faces the typical problem of job applicants lacking the required skill-sets for tech jobs, though jobs are available.

Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing.

Indian government was doing its utmost to ensure that expertise from within and outside the country flows in to give manufacturing a fillip, Chaturvedi said.

The government is partnering with other countries like Germany with its Mittelstand companies to tap their technologies for the benefit of India's medium, small and micro enterprise sector, he added.