Digital innovation can help solve problem of employment, access to services: Tata group chief N Chandrasekaran

Mumbai: Tata group chairman N Chandrasekaran on Tuesday said digital innovation can help solve the problem of jobs and access to services. In remarks that come days after reports of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) finding unemployment reaching a 45-year-high at 6 percent, Chandrasekaran said jobs is a “hot topic” and the government has taken a number of steps on this front. [caption id=“attachment_4126745” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of N Chandrasekaran. Reuters.[/caption] He said jobs and access to services are the key problems when it comes to India and both the challenges are complementary, in such a fashion that solving one can automatically take care of the other. “The core of finding a solution to both of these problems in my mind is the innovation at the boundaries, innovation in the last mile. A digital innovation in the boundaries and digital innovation in the last mile,” the former chief of the country’s largest software exporter TCS said. “If you manage to solve the problem of access, you will end up solving the problem of jobs. So, you can’t take two different directions in solving these two problems,” he added. Chandrasekararan said that the lack of access is felt across all services, including education, health care and financial services. Responding to a media report on the NSSO data, the government sought to downplay the claims that come months before crucial general polls, saying the data had not been finalised. “The periodic labour force survey (PLFS) report of NSSO is not yet finalised. It is a draft report which has not been verified by the government… We are waiting for six-quarter data in the absence of which we cannot do quarter-on-quarter comparison,” Rajiv Kumar, the vice chairman of the NITI Aayog, had said.