<b>T N C Rajagopalan:</b> Prospects for the coming year

The new year starts today with a mix of hope and anxiety. Technological innovations and inward-looking policies portend significant transformation of global production chains and the trading environment.

Technological advancements in robotics are already enabling machines to perform many tasks that factory workers do now. The pace of innovation is so rapid that, soon, many labour-intensive industries in poorer countries, employing cheap labour, might start shifting to developed countries. 

For, the same tasks can be performed by machines more efficiently and at lower cost. Many jobs in even the information technology sector could start moving to richer countries, due to