Robot Apocalypse: Does it Matter for India’s Manufacturing Industry?


Dr. Sunil Mani,

The anxiety that technology will displace jobs on a large scale in the near future is flooding both academic and public debates, primarily in the developed world. The recent publication of a study by Oxford Martin School has predicted that a large number of occupations will see an increased rate of automation which is likely to have an adverse effect on employment, especially in the manufacturing sector. Employing a comprehensive dataset from the International Federation of Robotics, the study analyses the nature and extent of diffusion industrial robots in the Indian manufacturing industry. Instead of an occupation-based approach, the study uses a task-based one, which presents a more accurate picture of the effect of automation on manufacturing employment.



About the speaker

Professor Sunil Mani is the Director of the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram. Formerly, he was a member of the faculty and head of graduate studies at the United Nations University-Institute for New Technologies (now known as UNU-MERIT) at Maastricht in the Netherlands

He obtained his M. Phil and Ph.D. in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has done postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford on a fellowship from the Ford Foundation, New York. He has held Visiting Professorships at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy and University of Toulouse Jean Jaures, Toulouse, France and at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He is also currently serving as a member of the international advisory steering committee to Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) of the Human Sciences Research Council of Republic of South Africa and the National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy office, Thailand. Further, he serves on the editorial boards of two international journals, Research Policy (Elsevier), International Journal of Technology and Globalization (Inderscience),

Dr. Mani has published extensively in his area of specialization in the form of 8 books, and several articles in refereed international and national journals and chapters in books. His latest (2017) book is with Franco Malerba and Pamela Adams, Rise to Market Leadership, New Leading Firms from Emerging Countries, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, Mass, USA: Edward Elgar.



Venue: Conference room (0.16 & 0.17)

Date: 21 November 2018

Time: 11:00 - 12:00  CEST


UNU-MERIT