Robots Are Here, Almost

The use of industrial robots is growing at an unprecedented rate in India. Are blue-collar jobs under threat?

- Akshit Sangomla

WHEN RAMESH Negi started working as a technician at an automotive parts manufacturing unit in Faridabad in 2014, he had no idea he could lose the job to a machine. Belonging to a poor family in Uttarakhand, he had come to his relatives in the Haryana city in search of a job after completing his class X and almost immediately found one. But in March 2016, the owner of the workshop bought a computer-numerical-control (CNC) machine for R7 lakh and fired Negi along with three others.