Achieving sustainable development goals through Fourth Industrial Revolution: An Indian perspective

According to Professor Klaus Schwab (2016), we are living in a world where technology will alter the way we live, work, and communicate. With the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, internet of things (IoT), information and communication technology (ICT), nanotechnology, 3D Printing, genome editing, storage and quantum computing, the world has already entered the “Fourth Industrial Revolution (4th IR)” Era. Professor Klaus Schwab, who has coined the term, believes that exponential pace, unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, swiftness, possibility, and systems impact of 4th IR makes it different from others (Schwab, 2016). While third Industrial Revolution was simply digitization of the processes and procedures, Fourth Industrial Revolution is an innovation based on the combination of varied technologies.

All these goals are aligned with the Fourth Industrial Revolution either directly or indirectly. Innovative and technologically backup solutions may lead to more inclusive, inequality free, and sustainable society (United Nations, 2018).

Sustainable production
Fourth Industrial Revolution is one of the key aspects to achieve sustainable development across the world.
Quickening Sustainable Production is WEF System Initiative's project to shape the future of production. It emphasizes on harnessing the potential of innovation to achieve global competitiveness while delivering increased efficiency, improved human well-being, and less damage to environment (Leurent and Abbosh, 2019).

Carbon free economy
Fourth Industrial Revolution in its endeavor toward sustainable development intends to build a carbonfree economy as well. Clean energy and less carbon emissions are another major thrust area of sustainable development which is to be achieved through Fourth Industrial Revolution. It encourages a price on carbon emission (Regas, 2016). A carbon price will ensure appropriate investment of investors' money and will make the customers more aware and inclined toward buying products of those firms which produce less carbon footprints. Innovations equipped with 4IR technologies will also lead to sustainable urbanization. Cogeneration, coheating, cocooling, mobility on demand, digitally programmable space, intelligent street poles loaded with sensors to capture meteorological data, pollution data, and traffic movement may help in energy conservation and technology empowered cities .

Concept of minimizing waste
With companies exaggerating in scope and size, technology can bring-in sustainability to the corporate world as. Companies like Estee Lauder, the cosmetic giant of USA, has discharged zero waste to ecosystem since 2003. In their owned, 23 manufacturing and distribution facilities, if any such waste is generated which cannot be recycled, it is incinerated to produce energy (Fortune, 2019). WEF and The Forum of Young Global Leaders recognized companies such as Cambrian Innovation (USA), Lehigh Technologies (Georgia), Enerkem (Canada) for using the most innovative ways to ensure three R's, namely, reduce, reuse, and recycle (Fortune, 2019).

Sustainability through Industry 4.0
Ingersoll Rand has been supporting many corporates to achieve business sustainability through Industry 4.0. Sustainability facilitates companies in enhancing their productivity by leveraging local manufacturing operations, their innovation through R and D centers and growth through expansion of footprints (Poddar et al., 2019). All this is achieved with the help of 4 th IR technologies such as AI, IoT, and other latest technologies involved in mitigating the climate change.

Technology and patents
Technological innovations come with patents which is disadvantageous for least developed and developing nations. It is in the best interest of both developing and developed nations that the developing nations have access to proenvironmental technologies (Nagar, 2018). According to TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement, developed countries should be incentivized for technology transfers to least developed countries, but it does not make any reference to environmentfriendly technologies (TRIPS Article 66.2). In 2008, few companies, namely, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, and Sony introduced the Eco-Patent Commons, a copyrighted project intended to offer licenses. EPC provides environment friendly technology patents without charging any patent fees (Balta, 2015).

Circular economy
The circular economy challenges the concept of waste. What goes around as the product comes around as the waste and it needs to be recycled or reused by company (Potocknick and Gawel, 2019). Circular economy holds a huge scope for India as well. Circular economy concept is being promoted by companies in India where they are implementing business models that are based on reduce, reuse, and recycle paradigms. (Goyal et al., 2016).

Challenges to 4 th IR and SDG
According to the World Economic Forum, 21 st century is meant for maximizing the human well-being and facilitating the availability of basic human needs for free (World Economic Forum, 2018). However, with such a major job loss due to automation, the real challenge lies in skilling, training, and educating people for emerging jobs, which have potential in the future and are irreplaceable by machines (Sterling, 2019). Lack of skilled IT professionals is already holding back the digital transformation in era of 4IR (Tandon, 2018). Further, Fourth Industrial Revolution has also flamed the debate of brooding inequality in society (Byanyima, 2018). As the technology moves forward, billions of people are left behind, especially in under-developed and developing economies. Deprived of necessities, Fourth Industrial Revolution has very less relevance for all these people. Globalization is another factor which is fuelling-up discontent around the world. With 1% of rich holding 82% of world's wealth, globalization along with Fourth Industrial Revolution needs to narrate a new story (Byanyima, 2018). Inclusiveness is of utmost importance to spill the positive impact of Fourth Industrial Revolution to every human around the world. (Nath, 2017).

INDIA AND FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Toward Fourth Industrial Revolution
In 22 nd edition of World Congress on Information Technology organized by NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) organized in 2018, the Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi highlighted various initiatives taken by the government to percolate the technology and its usage for the masses. eNAM is an online agricultural portal, offering the best prices to the farmers and Umang App offers 185 Government services. Atal Innovation Mission is launched with an aim to ensure that relevant technological skills are imbibed in the children at young age (Modi, 2018).
NASSCOM has also inaugurated its "Skills of the Future" platform which provides an industry driven eco-system in tandem with information technology (IT). It emphasizes on 155+ skills, across 70+ job roles on ten emerging technological innovations, namely, AI, blockchain, and Fourth IR Technologies (Future Skills, 2018).

Research and Development
India has the 6 th largest R and D investment and is expanding its already internationalized innovation clusters such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad. There are 1200 R and D centers of multinational corporations in Bengaluru (Choongjae and Youngchul, 2018).

Indian Government's Initiatives for 4 th IR
The government has also initiated to invest rigorously in 4 th IR technology. NITI Aayog has prepared a roadmap which includes setting-up of five research excellence centers, 20 institutes for transformational AI and a cloud computing platform called AIRAWAT (Agarwal and Seth, 2019). Engineering Export Promotion Council along with the Department of Heavy Industry has set-up four demonstration centers that will help to project manufacturing as a smart and intelligent activity. They are aimed to enhance the competitiveness of Indian industries. These are: • Center for Industry 4.0 (C4i4) Lab in Pune • AIA Foundation for Smart Manufacturing at IIT Delhi • I4.0 India at IISc (Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru) and, • Smart Manufacturing Demo and Development Cell at CMTI (Ghosal, 2019).

Development of New Business Models Incorporating Recent Technology
Today India is not just importing the technology developed by the advanced economies but is also creating its own technologies by tailoring the global technologies as per the local needs and customs. There are three types of prevailing business models, namely (i) Innovations which are happening in west but are used in other countries as well. It includes sharing economybased enterprises such as Uber and Airbnb. (ii) Solutions which are developed for local needs only.
These are low-tech and low-budget solutions that work in emerging markets. India's financial inclusion using mobile technology is an apt example for it. (iii) Another is an origin from emerging markets but have the potential to scale up across the globe. India's OYO model is a good example of how low-to-middle level hotels can be connected through technology to provide cheap and efficient hospitality services (Sharma, 2017).

Advancements in Production and Marketing with 4 th IR
Most of the Indian firms are experimenting with new ways of production, marketing, studying consumer behavior, and delivering customer services with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They are increasingly using AI, robotics, 3D Printing, Cyber-physical systems to increase the efficiency and to deliver best possible value to their customers. For example, dyeing at Raymond production facilities is a fully automated process where the color precision is required to be accurate to 1/1000 th of a gram. This is achieved through 4 th IR technology only. Marico, the $900 million personal care products giant, has embraced technology in a very dynamic way. The company has more than 400 sensors in their plants to gather data pertaining to productivity and downtime planning. The sensors are installed across energy meters, flow meters, temperature and pressure gauges, RPM sensors, level transmitters, and visual flow sensing devices. The sensors are based on IoT technology. (Sharma, 2017).
Global information data and measurement company Nielsen are pioneering the use of neuroscience in India. Nielsen is tapping into neuroscience to measure the consumers' subconscious responses to various inducements and stimuli. Vodafone (India), in association with Nielsen, has applied the neuroscience technology to understand the consumers' thought process and their responses to the advertisements. Vodafone used electroencephalography and eye tracking to study effectiveness of its "Super Dad" Advertisement (Sharma, 2017). Increased automation and robots adoption do not seem to cause loss of employment in the aggregate but what is needed is reskilling and upskilling. (Ramaswamy, 2017).

Exploring Blockchain
Public sector has been exploring the opportunities with famous technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, i.e., blockchain, with 40 plus blockchain initiatives being executed recently (Future Skills, 2018). Unfortunately, there is huge demand -supply gap in skilled blockchain developers. In fact, according to a study, 99.75% of Indian developers do not have the right skill set to deal with blockchain platforms (Gupta, 2019). Realizing the scope of blockchain, there is a proposed blockchain also by the name "IndiaChain" which will transform the functioning of public administrative services to make systems more transparent and efficient (Singla, 2019).

INDIA AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY
India is home to 1/6 th of world population and hence India holds the key SDG Achievements as well (NITI Aayog, 2020). Ambitions of electrifying universal rural areas, greater road and digital connectivity, immense growth of clean and renewable energy, sanitation, and housing for all and elementary school education worldwide, etc., are always on focus and emphasis (NITI Aayog, 2020). India's premier think tank NITI Aayog has been entrusted with coordinating SDGs and mapping the schemes accordingly (NITI Aayog, 2020 The digital penetration of India is also increasing at a rapid pace. For every 100 persons, 88 have mobile connections and 49 are internet subscribers (NITI Aayog, 2020). India is among top five in the area of space exploration. India is ranked 9 th and 12 th worldwide on the number of scientific papers published and patents, respectively. However, India's spending has always been low in research and innovation. India spends just 0.85% of GDP on research and innovation which is quite low while comparing to other developed as well as developing countries (Technology and Action for Rural advancement, 2015).
Sustainability and achieving SDGs are on priority not just for the governments but also for the corporates as well. Big business houses such as Mahindra, Tata, and Flipkart have already recruited sustainability officers. The companies are also investing in sustainable initiatives to make a mark in sustainable development. ITC has been constantly working on water recycling and carbon positive for more than 10 years. Business groups such as Bosch, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and others are aiming for reducing carbon footprints with every elapsing year (Poddar et al., 2019).

INDIA'S SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ROLE OF FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION JAM Trinity
India envisages to reduce poverty and inequality with JAM (Jan Dhan -Aadhaar -Mobile) (NITI Aayog, 2020). In the Economic Survey of 2014-2015, Arvind Subramanian introduced the acronym JAM, to refer to three technologies that could transform the lives of poor and uplift them from impoverished conditions. The combination of financial inclusion, biometric identification, and digital access is expected to revolutionize the lives of underprivileged in India (Subramanian, 2018). The government is trying to get best out of Fourth Industrial Revolution Technology IoT to get all the information and services on a single-networked platform. One such initiative is DigiLocker which provides access to 1.9 billion digitized documents till date (NITI Aayog, 2017).

Digitizing Services
Although India is already delayed in making optimum use of the technology, increasingly all the government work and services are being shifted online to make them handy. The Government of Delhi and VFS Global provide ten commonly used services at doorstep and endeavors to scale-up to 100 services in time to come (Ojha, 2018).

Clean and Renewable Energy
India is making major investments toward clean and renewable sources of energy to achieve sustainable development in energy domain as well. Due to recent investments, clean energy installations and one of the largest renewables auction market worldwide, India ranks 2 nd most promising market after Chile, as per the ClimateScope Report by energy researcher Bloomberg New Energy Finance (Thomas, 2018).
The Indian government has set an ambitious goal of 175GW of clean energy generation by March 2022. Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies may play a key role in harnessing the power of renewable energy and transmitting its benefits common people, ensuring no transmission leakages. Karnataka, the only Indian state to generate five Giga Watts of solar power, also generates energy from other sources such as wind (4.7 Giga Watts), and hydro/biomass which contributes to 2.6 Giga Watts (Sangriya and Nayak, 2015) (T V Ramchandra, 2007). The most impressive fact is that renewable energy produced by Karnataka is at par with what is produced by Netherlands and Denmark, the countries are pioneers in producing renewable energy.

Sustainable Cities
The World Economic Forum has assessed how the state of Andhra Pradesh could benefit from harnessing new technologies and indicates that there could be an annual opportunity of $5 billion for Andhra Pradesh by the year 2022 if it integrates more and more Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies (Charlton, 2018).

Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, India
The center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (India), which is a joint initiative of World Economic Forum and the Government of India, intended to serve as a trusted space for the government, top organizations, academia, civil society and international corporations, to codesign, assess and scale-up policy agendas, industry standards, norms, and guidelines for governing Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies and their applicability in sustainable development (Russo and Zopf, 2018).

Addressing Agricultural Problems with 4 th IR
World Economic Forum (WEF) Center is using 4 th IR technology with Government of Maharashtra to modernize agricultural practices in the state. It will collaborate with the government and private players to chart out all the agricultural lands across districts with the help of drones. These plots will help on multiple fronts, namely, assessing crop health, generating prescription maps with locationbased fertilizer recommendations, inspecting irrigation and other infrastructures, analyzing soil quality, and assessing and predicting crop volume (Russo and Zopf, 2018). By empowering farmers with technology, agricultural productivity could be improved which will help to combat rural poverty as well (Brende and Sonmez, 2018).

Digitized PDS
As per the Economic Survey 2018-2019 Volume 2, the ration cards and beneficiary details in all states and union territories have been digitized. The online allocation of food grains and supply chain computerization is complete except in few states and union territories. The government is interested in replacing PDS with Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) since long. However, the research shows that replacing PDS with DBT could be problematic and complex (Alexander, 2019).

THE FLIP SIDE OF THE COIN: WHAT ISSUES INDIA MAY FACE
Worries about the effect of technology on job losses are known to everyone. In 1931, Keynes -the famous economist, warned about the prevalent technological unemployment due to our discovery of means for economizing the use of labor, out-running the pace at which we can explore new uses/work for them . The Fourth Industrial Revolution with its disruption is expected to bring two key changes: • First, there is a ruining effect as tech-based disruption and automation replaces capital for labor; forcing them to become unemployed or to reallocate their skills elsewhere. • Second, this destruction effect is accompanied by a capitalization effect in which gives rise to the demand for novel goods and services which in turn creates new jobs, businesses, and even industry sectors .
As per Future of Jobs Report, 75 million jobs may be displaced at global level while 133 million extra roles may appear at the same time (World Economic Forum, 2018). An over -reliance on automation for an over -populated country like India will shrink job creation. The present unemployment rate is estimated to be around 6% (NITI Aayog, 2020). Economy needs to generate entirely new opportunities for 12-13 million new university graduates who come into workforce every year. Further, the country is expected to lose 1.5 million jobs annually too (Sharma, 2017). According to a report by people strong, one in four job losses in India will happen on account of automation (Laha, 2017). In IT Sector, more than 2 lakh engineers will lose their jobs in years to come (PTI, 2017).
As per Future of Jobs Report by World Economic Forum, at organizational level, 83% of the companies surveyed in India look to automate work in coming years and 54% Mishra and Maheshwari of existing workforce need re-skilling (World Economic Forum, 2018). Hence, the government and the companies need to invest a lot in training, development, up-skilling, and re-skilling of the Indian workforce to make them ready for Industry 4.0. Fourth Industrial Revolution and Digitization will bring more and more gadgets, devices, and hardware. The electronic waste thus generated is a menace for environment. India is evolving as a substantial e-waste generator. E-waste in India is mounting at a rate of 500% every year, with only <5% being recycled (Pandya, 2018). India has only 312 authorized e-waste recyclers and dismantlers as on June 2019. (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, 2019) About 95% of India's e-waste is recycled in gray market, in a crude manner. The need of hour is E-waste management techniques such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) (Garlapati, 2014). (Kumar and Dixit, 2018).

THE WAY AHEAD AND CHALLENGES FOR INDIA
If Fourth Industrial Revolution to reach its fate in India, a substantial investment is required to be directed toward research and innovation by the Indian government. Like the Chinese government, India needs to make an explicit target to bring itself into the realm of "Innovation Nation". China keeps "Zizhu Chuangxin" meaning indigenous innovation as the central notion to become an innovation nation. Zizhu literally means "self-directing." It stresses on autonomy and strategic control at the national level and domestic enterprise level involving organizational learning, technology building, and technology selection (Zhou et al., 2016). Although the political apparatus is different in India and China, what India needs to focus on is the strengthening of domestic companies for promoting research, innovation, and development. India should also develop government financed research institutes which is very common in South Korea (Lim, 1999). India has reached 52 nd position in Global Innovation Index 2019 but there is still a long way to go (Press Trust of India, 2019). Moreover, if we think Jugaad innovation -the cheaper adaptation of existing innovations will make us an innovation nation, then that is somewhere, we are highly mistaken (Jishnu, 2015).
The China's path of innovation has been shaped both by top-down (mostly powered by state owned enterprises) and bottom-up strategies. China's estimates of innovation performance, for example, have improved to 49% of the EU level in 2015 (huge jump from 35% in 2006) as the country shifts the focus of its economic model toward innovation and services . Japan exclusively believes in building innovative enterprises that fuels the innovation of the nation. These enterprises are built with three key ingredients: • Strategic control through cross shareholding, stable shareholding, and professional managers • Organizational integration through various Japanese management methods such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, and 5S and lastly, • Financial commitment which means patient capital to bear the sweet fruits of innovation and technology (Zhou et al., 2016).
A same model of enterprises can be experimented in Indian Industry to propel it through Fourth Industrial Revolution and make it a pioneer in same. The technology solutions will surely help in achieving various SDGs. India, to reap the benefits of Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies, should develop a manufacturing base, which is quite weak in India at present. Weak manufacturing base is attributed to many reasons, namely, lack of skilled labor, lack of labor reforms, high material cost, and lack of synchronized supply chains (Mukherjee et al., 2019). A strong manufacturing base will help to implement 4 th IR technologies and ensure sustainable and efficient production.
The earnings of small and marginal farmers have dipped by 30% due to increased input costs, weather -related issues affecting crop yields, fluctuating prices and lack of technological, and financial and market access (Bouton, 2019). The technology needs to touch the roots and especially reach to the farmers who are living the impoverished lives and need an immediate support from the government. Innovation in agriculture would help to increase the yields which will not only draw them out of poverty but will also play an overhauling role in combating hunger. Specific social media platforms for farmers are also required, just such as Agri -Google, Krishi Facebook, and Krishi LinkedIn can be chartered out for the farmers (Lele and Goswami, 2017 Effective Implementation of 4 th IR Initiatives (Mishra et al., 2003), (Brende and Sonmez, 2018)   Many fear that automation at such a large scale will lead to job loss, however such technology solutions would require upskilling, reskilling and would create more employment opportunities and economic growth (Ramaswamy, 2017). Greater technological infrastructure would be enabled thus leading to digital inclusion. Continuous Research and Development will lead to new technology solutions .With Digital inclusion, financial inclusion will come in tandem (Bansal, 2014). Robust Supply chains (Kamble et al., 2018) will ensure prompt deliverability of products. Modernization of agri supply chains and Public Distribution System (Hatiskar and Pai, 2018) would ensure food security to the underprivileged. Modernised farming will yield grain surplus (Mishra et al., 2003) thus reducing farmers' plight. The vision of Indian Government to make major cities Smart Cities will manifest if all these aspects are being equipped with technology. Advanced waste management and circular economy will not just make cities cleaner, but will create new business and job opportunities (Agamuthu, 2017) (Goyal et al., 2016). All these sustainable development goals would be pursued without damaging environment or wildlife and keeping carbon emissions in control. (Gonsalez and Johnson, 2017) .However a major setback which is faced by India for application of Fourth IR technology is that many domains of SDG haven't been digitized which makes Fourth IR application difficult .This aspect has been highlighted in Table 1 specifying that whether SDG areas are digitized or not and if they are digitized , then what is the extent of digitization

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH AGENDA
The paper is not devoid of limitations. Firstly the paper is based on pure theoretical work lacking empirical evidence to validate the findings. Future research should be based on developing framework backed by empirical evidence. Though 4IR is not much prevalent in India, however there are specific sectors like private manufacturing sector and healthcare (Sharma, 2017) which make good use of 4 IR technologies in India. Data could be collected from such organizations to draw a comparative study how 4IR technologies yield better results in all aspects. The paper aimed to capture holistic view of SDGs thus making it oblivious of detailed analysis of individual SDGs. Hence for future research, individual SDGs can be picked up to draw comparative analysis of 4IR versus non 4IR settings, so as to ensure deeper detailed analysis of individual SDG .Models like Technology Adoption Model (Davis, 1985) and Technology Readiness Index (Parsuraman, 2000) could be tried and tested. TRI has been used in combination with TAM to predict the technology adoption in the past (Pattansheti, 2016).