Can technology replace manpower.

“Hey bro, lets play cricket” I said to my younger brother this Sunday after finishing all my pending work of office. He smiled and said,” Yes bhai, get ready” and started running around the house in search of something. I went to balcony holding bat and ball and was waiting for him to come down. He shouted from the 1^st floor of house,” What are you doing outside? Don’t you want to play cricket? Hurry up! I’ve found second controller of the the playstation. We can now play multiplayer”. I just uttered, “Aaaah! Technology” and went above and started playing with him.

This unbelievable progress in technology is not an instant phenomenon, but it is a beautiful work of human’s constant effort to improve his quality of life. The non giving-up attitude of the human beings have led to the advancement in technology that was even unimaginable some-time ago. It all started with the invention of wheel. That was one of the first technological innovative thing man made as he started exploring the earth and its natural resources. Today it might seem that it was just a puny invention, but it changed the man’s life upside down at that time.

As physical work was reduced to some extent by regular inventions like wheel, ploughs, carts but the major turn-around was with the industrial revolution and introduction of machines in 18^th century, replacing manual work done by man. Was that necessary? Why did all this happened? This was due to the human’s constant striving to reduce physical labour as well as increase in efficiency and productivity. What a group of nearly 20 men can do in a week to cut a hill, the same work can be done by a JCB in ten hour saving human’s time as well as energy. But technology was not limited to only industrial innovations, but it showed its influence in every field with the passage of time and improvement in human’s capabilities. We became the Gods of our own fate. We replaced the human workforce with technology reducing labour and snatched away the opportunity of employment from millions of people. But is that really the case on which many people keep on arguing?

Technology has changed the the way we think. We humans always had security issues right from the beginning. Earlier we used watchmen/personal guards to make our houses and colonies secure. But now, we see a single person can monitor alarms, CCTVs from a single room reducing human effort. The thing that comes to the mind is, “Yes! Technology have replaced manpower”. But that’s not true. What if there is a power failure? The whole of the system will stop working. Technology will be a mute spectator at that time. Yes, we can depend of technology but over-dependence on anything will only lead us to chaos.

Like personal security, the defence of a country is a big issue and technology have played a big role by providing supersonic aircrafts, missiles for security and drones for surveillance reducing human workforce for constant monitoring at peculiar areas. Here lies the case of substituting manforce with technology in the areas like Siachin. Technology cannot replace manpower but it can be used as a substitution to value human life.

While talking about the security of a country, Space technology is the area which comes to the mind. Satellites usage and its applications like GPS helps for security but also with this, exploration in the study of oceans and weather phenomenon could not have been possible without technology. With ISROs Mars Mission, NASAs “New horizons” which is a Pluto mission, we have come a long way in technology. But all these effort are being put not to replace manpower but to improve manpower by striving for the best. We want to explore the universe and reach the places where we can’t go physically so technology becomes our best friend in achieving that.

Technology have not only helped us to explore the space, but by revolutionary thinking of humans, we are now able to manipulate matter at atomic and molecular scale using biotechnology and nanotechnology. For e.g: Introduction of GM crops. It might be a controversial issue but no one can deny that this might be the future face of agriculture. Technology have helped us in increase in output and productivity but only with regular human efforts. Farmers work hard on the field to make sure they get the best out of technology. What’s the use of agro-technology without agriculture, and what is agriculture without a farmer? Nothing.

Until now, it looks like technology cannot replace manpower but it can substitute manpower to very much extent. Well in that case, to know more, we need to dig a little deeper. The best suited cases here are of:

IT sector: Information technology have changed the projection of the future. It have applications in business, banking, healthcare, communication, management and countless things. Also, service sector is solely based on IT management and more than half of India’s GDP is from service sector. Have technology replaced manpower here that we’re so much dependent on it?  China and India got freedom at the same time. China focused on industrialization whereas India directly shifted to tertiary sector without laying much emphasis on manufacturing sector. China focused on development of manpower whereas we focused on “only development as soon as possible”. This is where we did mistake. Technology can give us machines, but manpower drives the machines. Even by using IT technology to large extent, we still are lagging behind China. This clearly shows the effectiveness of manpower. India realized that and “Make in India”, “Stand up India, Start up India” and “Skill India” are measure taken by using respective technology to grow our manufacturing sector to explore manpower.

Education: Technology have changed the way of learning. Internet plays a big role in education now. Video lectures and online learning through computer programming does not require a teacher to be present physically. But do we only want to make our children educated single dimensionally? What about productivity? What about the level of understanding, which is different for everyone. What about socialization? What about communication? These questions really puts a question mark right on the face of the people who say technology can be fully substituted in place of teachers. Technology can play a huge role in analysing scores and marks, but achieving that score is merely not possible by only technology as teachers place can never be substituted by anyone.

To sum-up, technology cannot replace manpower, but there can be a symbiotic relation between both of them to make life much more easier and comfortable. We cannot reject technology just to make people have more labour work and employment. Rather than that, technology shall be used to reduce physical work and generate more intellectual work so we grow more with time. By all this I can only conclude that it is right to say,“If you want to plant for a year, plant corn; if you want to plant for ten years plant trees; and if you want to plant for hundred years, plant men.”