Jobs growth: Digitally-enabled mass services to be game changer

In the last 150 years, the world has seen three industrial revolutions starting with the steam engine in the 19th century, mass manufacturing in the mid-20th one and the internet in late 20th century. Each of these technological innovations transformed productivity and re-defined the paradigms of economic growth and jobs led by countries which spearheaded these technology revolutions—UK with steam engine, US with mass manufacturing, and China with internet enabled low-cost manufacturing. Now we are embarking on the fourth industrial revolution led by digital technologies which will once again reshape the paradigm for economic growth and jobs as I argued in part 1 of my two-part series where I suggested three shifts that should shape this new paradigm. In this follow-up article, I develop one of these ideas—the concept of mass services—which I believe has the potential to become the engine of economic and jobs growth for India in the 21st century.