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Automation is the process of advanced mechanization in which complex machines perform tasks formerly performed by men.

The possibilities of automation depend on the nature of the end products, and on the extent which a company is willing to commit itself to turning out a few standardized items. The production gasoline readily lends itself to automation because gasoline is fluid and homogeneous.

Automobile production is less readily automated because motor vehicles are made up of thousands of heterogeneous parts. Attempts at automation meet almost insuperable obstacles, e.g., in the shoe industry because of the enormous variety of sizes, widths, styles and materials that make up a diversified product line.

Automation is no single form of technology. There are many stages and types of automat production. Much controversy over the impact of automation on socio-technical systems and employ alienation is due to this diversity. Worker reaction to automation depends on the nature of the work setting before automation. For example, in some offices traditional clerical jobs have been displaced by the introduction of electronic data processing systems.

When this takes place, the employee’s (is simplified, but his control over the work and his freedom of physical movement are reduced. Another study of office automation found that when a high speed computer system was introduced into a insurance firm where clerical producers had already been mechanized, the result was widening of th employee’s responsibility.

It is difficult to distinguish the effects of automation as such from the effects of change over to the new system. A common finding is that installation of automation replaces physical fatigue with mental tension.

However, the nervousness that workers in newly automated plants report may be due the difficulties in adjusting to a radically changed way of work. In the oil and chemical industries, which have been automated for many years, operators have become habituated to the job, and complaints 01 mental tensions are less common.

But automatic technology never stands still and the introduction ol new techniques means that employees must become accustomed to frequent changes in operations. Automated processes require workers who are more adaptable and flexible than the average mass- production worker or low-skilled clerical employee. That is why automated firms seek employees with higher education and some technical knowledge.

Despite the difficulty in generalizing about automation, a number of consequences seem firmly established. Work in the factory becomes lighter and cleaner. Manual skills decline in importance. Employee responsibility is heightened. Advanced automation in both factory and office tends to enlarge jobs rather than further sub-divide the work. Most important is its impact on socio-technical systems, as automation enhances the interdependence of all employees and contributes to the integration of the organisation. Since events in one segment of the process have immediate repercussions on the total system, communication increases both horizontally and vertically. There is more consultation between employees and supervisors, between engineers and foremen, between the office and the factory.

The long-term growth in the proportion of clerical jobs in the total labour force may be reversed if computer systems continue to replace traditional office jobs.

Automation may eliminate the distinction between factory and office, between hand and brain work, which has been a central element in the stratification system of every industrial society.

As the most recent form of production technology, automation has attracted the interest of a number of sociologists several have argued that automation has important consequences which extend well beyond the work place. In particular, it has been suggested that automation may produce important changes both within the working class and in the relationship of the working class to the rest of society.

Blauner saw that, automation produced the non-alienated worker; it replaced dissent between workers and management with consensus. Repressive and coercive control was succeeded by consultation and cooperation. Militant trade union activity has transformed the loyalty of the firm. The hostility produced by alienation was dissipated by meaningful work in a more cohesive, integrated industrial climate.

These factors combined to transform the worker. His ‘social personality is increasingly like that of ‘new middle class, the white-collar employee in bureaucratic industry. Blauner concludes that automation has led to a decline in the workers class consciousness. Serge Mallet argues that automation will not lead to a more general integration of workers into capitalist society. He maintains that automation will highlight the major contradiction of capitalism, the collective nature of production and the private ownership of the forces of production.

Since workers in automated industry have greater control over and responsibility for production, they will tend to see themselves as the real controllers of industry.

Industrialisation and Environment

Nature has been very much part of Indian social life. But, like other countries of the world, the interaction between human beings and their environment is taking an alarming turn in India too. Over­emphasis on industrialisation is threatening the human environment equilibrium in Indian society.

The process of industrialisation has contributed much towards polluting the water, through draining the filth and industrial wastes in rivers. It has been discovered that two-thirds of water-based diseases like typhoid, cholera and jaundice cause severe health problems. These industrial effluents often kill fish and other water bound creatures.

The industrial smoke increases the proportion of carbon dioxide in environment, which leads to the ‘green house’ effect. This will have effect on seasonal balance, and more and more persons will suffer from respiratory diseases.