With the beginning of harvesting of Boro paddy in the first and second week of April, the unemployment in the sector eases off. In fact, there is a crisis of workers during the harvesting season. This has forced the introduction of combined harvesters in many areas including the haors where rains in the upper riparian regions always pose a threat to paddy harvest. Seasonal variations in unemployment are quite natural in almost every country. But where employs the lion's share of the labour force, employment situation is more fluctuating.
So this quarterly ups and downs are not highly concerning. When the employment parameters of industries and service sectors are disrupted, there is cause for serious concern. This quarterly data of the Labour Force Survey do not give such details as the seasonal migration of rural workers to cities and towns for alternative employment such as rickshaw pulling and vending. The majority of them also go back to villages to reap Boro paddy. With large-scale mechanisation of agriculture, this process may be seriously affected.
So the question centres around how the country's industrial and service sectors are faring in the post-pandemic and Ukraine's war-induced global recessionary regime. The forecast made by the World Economic Forum in its latest report, 'Future of Jobs', however, is hardly encouraging. In the next five years, 83 million employees in the world are likely to lose their jobs. The job market, including in India with the largest number of population, will be in turmoil. Until 2027, only 69 million jobs will be created. This means that the job market will shrink severely instead of expanding. But there is a need for providing for the growing army of workforce in the least developed and developing countries.
True, in some highly industrial countries the number of employees, workers in particular, is declining. But with increasing automation and more particularly intervention of the artificial intelligence (AI) in human brain works, there will be a paradigm shift in the way industry and the service sector run. What is frightening is the dire prediction of Geoffrey Hinton, the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' to the effect that the advancement made in the AI poses, "profound risks to society and humanity". When the man who created the foundation technology for the AI system and was involved with the Google and OpenAI---the start-up behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT, finds the AI marching on at dangerous speeds to eclipse human intelligence threatening jobs and spreading misinformation, there is no reason to take the warning lightly. His resignation from Google confirms his conviction of the catastrophic implications of AI on society and the makeup of humanity.
The worst case scenario, as Hinton paints, is the misuse or abuse of the immense power of AI by bad actors or megalomaniacs. Even if this does not reach that stage, there is the fear of enactment of the Orwellian vision of big brothers ruling the roost.
So there is no reason to go gaga over the AI as the tech giants would like people the world over to believe in its unlimited merit. In countries with oversize populations like Bangladesh, even extensive automation can bring about social disasters so far as livelihoods of the vast majority are concerned. Bangladesh has its awful incompatibility between its education system and the job market. The primary task for the government is to make education, higher education in particular, equal to the task of meeting the requirement of different sectors including the special requirements of different local situations.
It is a fact that the percentage of the unemployed among youths with higher education is the highest in the country. As high as 33.19 per cent graduates and post-graduates are unemployed here. How the new education curriculum will be able to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of manpower at the higher and middle echelons of the job market is yet to be seen. There has to be a transition to green energy and technology in order to overcome the dependence on imported fossil fuels. So, the education ought to focus on developing knowledgeable manpower that can take up the challenge of building a green and eco-friendly Bangladesh in the future.
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com