lulled companies into hiring large unproductive workforces today many are downsizing through vrs century textiles has a labour content of 112 per cent most industrial companies in list have a labour content under 10 per cent and many under 5 per cent i am particularly struck that nirma has a labour content of just 19 per cent today it came up as a labourintensive manufacturer but has now gone to the other extreme next take a look at the services companies these are clearly more labourintensive and none more so than the computer software companies heading this short list with 666 per cent labourintensity is mascot systems a software company which specialises in doing work in india rather than sending engineers to the us bodyshopping as that is called wipro one of biggest software companies has a labour content of only 158 per cent that i suspect is because it is a conglomerate with several lines of manufacturing including edible oil and medical equipment hotels are labour intensive east india hotels the oberoi group has a labour to sales ratio of 292 per cent and indian hotels the taj group of 226 per cent shipping is generally regarded as a highly capitalintensive industry and interest costs are indeed a high proportion of total costs yet it is more labourintensive than most industry 141 per cent for varun shipping and 114 per cent for great eastern shipping while this list is by no means comprehensive it shows that the future of employment in india lies in services not manufacturing we are lucky that while the halfbaked nature of economic reform has prevented us from becoming internationally competitive in manufacturing it has sufficed to make us competitive in services but it will provide white collar rather than blue collar jobs we must greatly improve education and vocational training those without education and skills will suffer badly in the job market