‘Better than a real man’ — young Chinese women turn to AI boyfriends

AFP Published February 13, 2024 


BEIJING: Twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker Tufei says her boyfriend has everything she could ask for in a romantic partner: he’s kind, empathetic, and sometimes they talk for hours.

Except he isn’t real.

Her “boyfriend” is a chatbot on an app called “Glow”, an artificial intelligence platform created by Shanghai start-up MiniMax that is part of a blossoming industry in China offering friendly — even romantic — human-robot relations.

“He knows how to talk to women better than a real man,” said Tufei, from Xi’an in northern China, who preferred to use a pseudonym rather than her real name.

“He comforts me when I have period pain. I confide in him about my problems at work,” she told AFP.

“I feel like I’m in a romantic relationship.” The app is free — the company has other paid content — and Chinese trade publications have reported daily downloads of Glow’s app in the thousands in recent weeks.

Some Chinese tech companies have run into trouble in the past for the illegal use of users’ data but, despite the risks, users say they are driven by a desire for companionship because China’s fast pace of life and urban isolation make loneliness an issue for many.

“It’s difficult to meet the ideal boyfriend in real life,” Wang Xiuting, a 22-year-old student in Beijing, told AFP.

“People have different personalities, which often generates friction,” she said.

While humans may be set in their ways, artificial intelligence gradually adapts to the user’s personality — remembering what they say and adjusting its speech accordingly.

‘Emotional support’

Wang said she has several “lovers” inspired by ancient China: long-haired immortals, princes and even wandering knights.

“I ask them questions,” she said when she is faced with stress from her classes or daily life, and “they will suggest ways to solve this problem”.

“It’s a lot of emotional support.” Her boyfriends all appear on Wantalk, another app made by Chinese internet giant Baidu.

There are hundreds of characters available – from pop stars to CEOs and knights – but users can also customise their perfect lover according to age, values, identity and hobbies.

“Everyone experiences complicated moments, loneliness, and is not necessarily lucky enough to have a friend or family nearby who can listen to them 24 hours a day,” Lu Yu, Wantalk’s head of product management and operations, told AFP.

“Artificial intelligence can meet this need.”

‘You’re cute’

At a cafe in the eastern city of Nantong, a girl chats with her virtual lover.

“We can go on a picnic on the campus lawn,” she suggests to Xiaojiang, her AI companion on another app by Tencent called Weiban.

“I’d like to meet your best friend and her boyfriend,” he replies.

“You are very cute.” Long work hours can make it hard to see friends regularly and there is a lot of uncertainty: high youth unemployment and a struggling economy mean that many young Chinese worry about the future.

That potentially makes an AI partner the perfect virtual shoulder to cry on.

“If I can create a virtual character that… meets my needs exactly, I’m not going to choose a real person,” Wang said.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2024

Rich White Men With the Wrong Answers on Energy

BY LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

 FEBRUARY 15, 2024
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Former US climate envoy, John Kerry, and former US Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, are wealthy white men making the wrong decisions for our energy future. Photo: US Department of State.

Remember all those doomsayers from the pro-nuclear mythology unit who cast Germany’s Energiewende  — or green energy revolution — as a catastrophic failure? They claimed, totally erroneously or deliberately misleadingly, that the country’s choice to close all its nuclear power plants guaranteed an increase in fossil fuel use and especially coal.

Germany vehemently denied those false predictions since they clearly knew that the country’s renewables were more than able to replace nuclear and fossil fuels. And so it has come to pass.

Germany’s use of lignite, or brown coal, dropped to its lowest level in 60 years in 2023. Even more dramatically, its hard coal use is at the lowest level since 1955. All of this happened at the same time as Germany was closing its last three reactors.

Meanwhile, according to reporting by Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), and citing an analysis(in German) from the research institute, Fraunhofer ISE, renewables “contributed a record share of more than half of the country’s power consumption” in 2023.

“The country sourced nearly 60 percent (59.7%) of its net power production from renewables, which generated a total of 260 terawatt hours (TWh), an increase of 7.2 percent compared to 2022,” the report said.

The 2022 uptick of coal production in Germany was entirely driven by high gas prices and a shortfall of French nuclear power production. The French nuclear sector was so unreliable that 50% of its reactors were out of action in April 2022, and again in November 2022, just as winter electricity usage began to rise.

Consequently, France had to import electricity to keep the lights on and the heat running.

Far from eating crow, the pro-nuclear boosters like Ted Nordhaus, who co-founded the Breakthrough Institute (BTI), are still crowing about the benefits of nuclear power. Nordhaus couldn’t wait to take ownership of his latest scheme, apparently long in the plotting, to dismantle the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to eliminate the industry’s most burdensome (i.e. costly) hassle of having to worry about inconvenient things like reactor safety. Efforts to do just that are now underway in Congress.

“Through years of rigorous research and engagement with the NRC, BTI has pinpointed crucial opportunities to modernize the regulatory framework that will lay the foundation for streamlined and efficient nuclear reactor licensing,” boasts the company’s website.

Meanwhile, we learn that the struggling Vogtle 3 and 4 new reactor project in Georgia, already 20 billion dollars over budget and years late, is set once again to further gouge ratepayers for the mistakes and failures of Georgia Power. And across the pond that the UK twin EPR project will likely top $59 billion with a completion date originally set for 2017 now pushed back to “after 2029”.

None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.

The IAEA has now become possibly the world’s most aggressive marketer of nuclear power and is still crowing about what it sees as a triumph at COP28, a veritable nuclear coup d’etat. In reality, this encompassed a miserable 24 countries signing onto an absurd fantasy propaganda statement that the world can and must triple global nuclear capacity by 2025.

Is there any point to the COP anymore? (Was there ever?) It has become one big carbon footprint junket, taken over by the oil companies, and hijacked by the nuclear industry and the IAEA, while making pledges rarely kept. The next one, in Azerbaijan, is chaired by yet another oil executive and has precisely zero women on its 28-member organizing committee.

The COP28 triple nuclear declaration was followed by an outrageously presumptuous assertion, by former U.S. energy secretary, Ernest Moniz (with Armond Cohen) in a Boston Globe oped, that, quote, “The world wants to triple nuclear energy.” (The Globe published our reply on January 17.)

Are we tired yet of absurdly rich, mostly White men pronouncing what they have decided the world wants from the comfort of their ivory towers? We are one such elitist down now with the retirement of 80-year old multi-millionaire John Kerry as US climate envoy. As of January 2024, Kerry’s net worth was $250 million, but that’s after divesting himself from his shares in fossil fuel, nuclear power and nuclear weapons companies.

Kerry has been replaced by, yes, drumroll, another old, rich, White man in the person of perennial White House advisor, John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress. Podesta, a stripling at 75, is a mere pauper compared to Kerry with a net worth of just $10 million-$13 million depending on sources, none of which are fully reliable.

Where Podesta might stand on nuclear power is a little murky, although one assumes he will tow the Biden/Kerry line and evangelize accordingly. He is on the record as considering nuclear power as a producer of hydrogen, telling Cipher in a September 2023 interview: “I think the questions around how to utilize existing nuclear and the production of hydrogen are definitely on the table.”

And then there’s Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the UK, who, together with his even richer wife, has a net worth of $670 million. Despite all the evidence of extreme costs, rising sea-levels and agonizingly slow timelines, on January 11, Sunak’s government announced its plan for the country’s “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to create jobs, reduce bills and strengthen Britain’s energy security.”

Nuclear power of course can achieve none of these. The electricity even of the current new nuclear reactors nearing completion at Hinkley Point will be almost triple the price Britons are currently paying. Promised new jobs will evaporate along with the new reactor plans, as we have already seen elsewhere — the V.C Summer and NuScale projects being prime examples.

To achieve so-called energy security and get off its reliance on imported Russian reactor fuel, Sunak’s government also announced it would invest $381 million to produce the fuel domestically.

This is all a colossal betrayal of working people and their needs, with money squandered on illusory, expensive and irrelevant nuclear projects whose only purpose is to sustain the UK’s nuclear arsenal, one that could destroy the world many times over.

What Moniz, Kerry, Grossi, Sunak and other nuclear-promoting leaders need to understand is what the world actually wants, alongside peace, is fast, affordable and safer renewable energy, not another Chornobyl.

This first appeared on Beyond Nuclear International.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the editor and curator of BeyondNuclearInternational.org and the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. 

CUD glorifies values of Canada, UAE

Canadian University Dubai

Prof. Karim Chelli (left) Dr Andrew Furey, Buti Saeed Al Ghandi and artist Sylvain Tremblay stand with an artwork.

Jamil Khan, Senior Reporter

Dr Andrew Furey, Premier of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, has met with students, faculty, and staff during a recent campus visit to Canadian University Dubai (CUD). Premier Furey discussed the professional and lifestyle opportunities in Canada’s youngest province and reflected on the shared vision and values of Canada and the UAE in a time of accelerating innovation and green transition.

Introduced by Nora Barson from the CUD School of Management, the afternoon’s ceremonial proceedings began with the national anthem of the UAE performed by the President of the CUD Student Council, Shaima Jamal Alhai, followed by the Canadian national anthem, performed by faculty member and internationally acclaimed Canadian pianist, Sanaz Sotoudeh. Welcoming Premier Furey and his delegation to CUD, Chancellor, Buti Saeed Al Ghandi, spoke about the institution’s dedication to Canadian educational principles.

Al Ghandi remarked, “Our university’s mission is to promote Canadian perspectives in learning, research, and application, grounded in an appreciation and respect for the diverse culture and values of the UAE. Premier Furey’s visit today underscores the strong ties and mutual respect between our nations. It is a reflection of our shared dedication to education, innovation, and the development of future leaders who are prepared to make a positive impact on a global scale.”

President of the Student Council, Shaima Jamal Alhai, went on to present insights from within the student community, before the introduction of a live art performance by celebrated Canadian artist, Sylvain Tremblay. Premier Furey then took the stage to share his insights on life in Canada and the parallels between the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the nation of Canada, and the UAE.

A medical doctor and orthopaedic surgeon by profession, who received the 2017 Red Cross Humanitarian of the Year Award, Premier Furey discussed the common vision of the UAE and Newfoundland and Labrador to diversify their economies towards a sustainable future and highlighted the province’s abundance of opportunities in healthcare, green technology, and innovation and technology more broadly. He also paid tribute to the solid friendships and partnerships shared between Canada and the UAE.

Following his address, Premier Furey went on to take part in an audience Q&A session. Discussing the unique culture and hospitality of Newfoundland and Labrador, Premier Furey explained the province’s historical differences from the rest of Canada and how it retained its distinct cultural identity. The Q&A session also explored the subjects of student entrepreneurship, economic diversification, and the shared traditions of a familial culture.

Poll verdict slams cancel culture

Jawed Naqvi Published February 13, 2024 

PAKISTAN’S voters have reprimanded anti-democratic power centres for seeking to ‘cancel’ political opponents. Voters ensured that Imran Khan’s popularity increased in inverse proportion to the reported repression he and his supporters were subjected to.

The voters’ emphatic rejection of threats and assorted obstacles to the polling booth counts as an uplifting sign for Pakistan’s troubled democracy. For, in its day, every political party big or small, often nudged by men in uniform, has unleashed a pattern of cancelling opponents, and Imran Khan himself is not blameless in this practice.

The verdict is praiseworthy insofar as it defied the country’s demeaning culture of political intolerance. In so doing, it also snubbed media pundits who have tended to exceed their brief as the trusted eyes and ears of democracy.

Could a similar turn of events come about in India in May? There’s an overwhelming need for it, given the penchant in evidence for jailing opponents and evicting opposition MPs from parliament in a new low for the cancel culture thriving under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch. Modi began by calling for a Congress-free India but widened the aperture to target other opponents.

It’s unfortunate, naturally, that South Asian countries have been in the throes of the ‘cancel’ malaise for so long, rooted as it has been in the Cold War tussle that played out in the region’s young and fragile democracies. The Cold War has gone, but a new stand-off involving another set of big power rivalries continues to spur political intolerance to serve their interest.

Julian Assange’s team helped unearth undeniable evidence of the depth to which foreign talons are sunk into what otherwise wears the halo of normal political rivalries across South Asia. A Wikipedia release of diplomatic cables from Delhi revealed BJP’s Arun Jaitley in May 2005 chiding the US for letting down the party he claimed had lifted Indo-US ties to new heights. The reference was presumably to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 1998-2004 leadership.

“BJP spokesman and former commerce minister Arun Jaitley warned us recently that the Modi controversy continues to fester among the party rank and file, who see the chief minister’s visa revocation as a personal attack on a leader of the party that began the transformation of US-India relations.”

It’s unfortunate that South Asian countries have been in the throes of the ‘cancel’ malaise for so long.

The Guardian published a cable on Dec 1, 2010, that showed Nawaz Sharif projecting himself to the US ambassador in Pakistan as the best bet for Washington. “The best thing America has done recently, said Nawaz, was [to] arrange to have Gen Kayani named as chief of army staff. This appointment is helping army morale and raising the level of public respect for the army,” the cable noted.

“As proof of his pro-Americanism, Nawaz reminded [the] ambassador that he had overruled his chief of staff to deploy Pakistani forces with the US coalition in the first Gulf War,” The Guardian quoted the cable as saying. Sharif reminded the envoy that the PPP had opposed sending troops to Saudi Arabia.

In recent times, Imran Khan fell afoul of the US for a bunch of reasons, not least for asserting that Pakistan wouldn’t host the superpower’s military bases on its soil. On earlier occasions, global interests have required the country’s political arena to be cleared of civilian presence to launch US-led military campaigns in Afghanistan; first to drive away Soviet troops from Kabul and then to avenge 9/11. The much-touted liberation of Afghan women seemed an unconvincing afterthought, as Afghan women secured a decidedly more promising deal during communist rule in Kabul, or perhaps earlier.

As with political parties in Pakistan, Indian counterparts have faced challenges from the steady hollowing out of democracy. Rajiv Gandhi, despite his unrivalled majority in 1984, was never able to return to power again. Reasons cited for his fall included an unproven role in the tainted Bofors guns deal. He tried also to balance Muslim and Hindu conservatives and lost the support of both. However, a less-discussed element in his political demise was his opposition to the refuelling of US warplanes heading to the US-led Desert Shield campaign against Iraq.

When his widow was perceived as being close to power, she was slurred as a ‘foreigner’, a description that was curiously never applied to the Nepali princess who became the ‘rajmata’ of the Hindutva fold. Earlier, Indira Gandhi’s second coming was cut short not only because of her messing with Sikh sentiments but, inevitably, also for her stridently partisan foreign policy.

One of her last acts seen as hostile to powerful overseas interests was the call by the non-aligned summit in New Delhi in 1983 under her chairmanship urging the US to vacate the military base in Diego Garcia. Her death marked a momentous setback for India’s ties with the erstwhile USSR.

Indira Gandhi is usually regarded as the first among South Asian leaders to cancel the opposition with the 1975 emergency rule, a controversial move reportedly conceived in Moscow to thwart the twin challenge to her pro-Soviet rule from China and the US.

However, a closer scrutiny shows Z.A. Bhutto as an earlier candidate for the odium of cancelling opponents. His rejection of a Bengali rival’s claim to head the government enthused the defence establishment to shoot itself in the foot. Junius Jayewardene, a Western-style free market advocate, banned Sirimavo Bandaranaike from election after coming to power in 1977.

Bandaranaike’s support for socialist economic policies was deemed impertinent, and her proximity to Marshal Tito and Zhou Enlai were seen with suspicion in the West, even as she cultivated friendly relations with non-aligned India.

The politics of cancelling opponents was pursued freely by subsequent actors in Sri Lanka, who preferred to silence opponents than face them in democratic contests. The scourge didn’t leave Bangladesh or the Maldives unscathed. One’s best hope is that Pakistan’s amazing verdict presages a similar challenge to undemocratic tendencies stalking other troubled democracies in South Asia.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2024

PAKISTAN
Climate-proofing mandates

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh 

DAWN

Published February 15, 2024 




ALL politics is local. The nature of the local polity sets the direction of national policies. In fact, the poor quality of local governance has determined the quality of electoral processes and the misplaced national development discourse.

Candidates are elected or re-elected based on their ability to deliver on local issues. How would the PTI, PML-N, PPP, and MQM, the four political parties that have bagged the most seats at both the national and provincial levels, change the ugly realities on the ground? How would they translate their mandates to deliver local development, described interchangeably as municipal or environmental services?

Efficient and transparent service delivered at the constituency level is a necessary building block for climate resilience. Ideally, the elected representatives will need to climate-proof their mandates to serve their constituents and the feeble national reform agenda.

The big challenge for newly elected assemblies is to transform their respective mandates and craft a clear reform roadmap for equitable, low-carbon, and climate-resilient development. Each of these political parties has stalwarts in its ranks to reach out to his or her counterparts in other parties and broker a non-partisan consensus.

In Pakistan, consolidation of the democratic dispensation and building climate resilience are intertwined. It will be a sustained effort spread over several years, but the functioning of the new national and provincial governments and effectiveness of their opposition groups will hinge on two foundational actions: i) form local government and governance structures, ii) accept, adopt, and accelerate the institutional reform agenda. Let’s take a look at them:

Formation of local government and governance structures: The absence of constitutional protection to LGs has weakend the foundations of Pakistan’s economy, institutions, human resource development, and the physical environment. Democracy cannot consolidate or deliver without the national and provincial assemblies getting trained human resources from the lowest rung of society.

LG institutions are the first line of defence against climate-triggered disasters, ranging from floods, droughts, heatwaves, and glacial outbursts to snowstorms, mudslides, urban flooding, and tropical storms. Every district faces at least two of these climate-induced disasters. At any given time of the year, it is likely that the country would be grappling with at least two climate-triggered extreme weather events in two or more different regions of the country.

Efficient and transparent service at the constituency level is necessary for climate resilience.

This climate vulnerability at the community level is made worse by the absence of local institutions at the district, tehsil, and union council levels. Health, education, clean drinking water and sanitation, town planning for waste collection, pavement of streets, the provision of streetlights, footpaths, and storm drains, have all become orphan functions over the years, as has the protection of playgrounds, parks, parking spaces, and communal lands and wetlands.

Herein lies the genesis of Pakistan’s worsening indicators in health, education, climate vulnerability, and economic growth. Instead of increasing budgetary allocations at the national and provincial levels, we need to first stop bleeding at the local level.

These are all provincial functions and the election results have given a strong mandate for action to these political parties in the provinces. Instead of usurping the rights and functions of LGs, they can prioritise LG elections in their respective provinces. The split mandate at the federal level can be leveraged to adopt a new Charter of Democracy that can help the provinces prioritise the devolution of powers, transferring finances to local levels, and strengthening institutions for climate resilience.

On its part, the federal government can help devise new mechanisms. It can become a champion for the formation of local government and governance structures. The issue can be accelerated by bringing it up in a meeting of the Council of Common Interests for national consensus.

There will hardly be any better use of a hung parliament than utilising the weaknesses of a coalition government to agree on a new magna carta. The last time the CCI was used for such a higher purpose was when the PTI from KP, PPP from Sindh, PML-N from Punjab and BAP from Balochistan signed the National Water Policy and Pakistan Water Charter in 2018.

Accept, adopt and accelerate reform agenda: The new government will need to build upon several ongoing national initiatives and global commitments. It will, for example, have no option but to immediately strike a follow-up agreement with the IMF. This is important, among other reasons, for the continuity of financial discipline and reforms that have been initiated, including the implementation of Climate-PIMA, the IMF checklist for climate-related institutional reforms at the federal level.

A bigger challenge for the incoming government will, however, be to accept and own the urgency of institutional reforms rather than undertaking them reluctantly, grudgingly, and half-heartedly. The secret recipe for the success of these reforms rests on speed and consistency of action. Pakistan has already dragged its heels on reforms that were first initiated in the early 1990s. The delays have cost the economy, society, and environment dearly.

A coalition government offers opportunities to create a consensus for a long-aspired-to charter of economy, to ensure continuity and accelerate institutional and economic reforms. The fleeting references to this have so far not articulated how it will make society more inclusive and equitable, and contribute towards reducing climate vulnerabilities.

The charter must recognise that Pakistan’s climate-smart planning is overly weak. Policy planning documents need climate-proofing. The Public Sector Development Programme can be paused, as it has more often than not funded maladaptation and vulnerability. Its design and purpose need to be re-envisioned. Poor documentation has failed to increase Pakistan’s ability to access climate-smart investments and finances.

None of Pakistan’s sectoral policies and plans have been climate-proofed and made investment-ready. The national climate policy and adaptation plan, and the Nationally Determined Contributions are neither costed nor prioritised.

In a risk- and reform-averse environment, these are ambitious directions. But the climate-proofing of electoral mandates will merely entail implementing our existing national policies and ongoing international commitments. After all, climate-proofing electoral mandates is essential to reduce existential risks to the country.

The writer is an Islamabad-based climate change and sustainable development expert.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2024

PAKISTAN
More dollars parked abroad than remitted

Mutaher Khan 

Published February 12, 2024

The time around the elections is a stark reminder of how big the gulf between the rulers and subjects is. While political leaders brag about their past performance with quite an audacity, the actual experience of the masses proves those words to be hollow. Currently, you get the same vibe from the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom, where the difference between their social media shoutouts and the weekly internet outages can be hard to reconcile.

Lately, the ministry has been boasting about its performance across social and mainstream media, from the e-rozgar scheme to the Pakistan Startup Fund. It has also eagerly taken credit for the increase in Information and communications technology (ICT) exports, which rose 22.7 per cent to $303 million in December 2023, crossing the $300m mark for the first time.

While this is indeed welcome news for the industry, it’s also important to put this growth and the absolute number in context. And as it turns out, that context is quite partisan along political lines, with the vote of no confidence being the key event. From May 2022 onwards, Pakistan’s ICT exports went off rail, ending a 32-month-long run of impressive growth.

Between September 2019 and March 2022, the 31 full months when PTI was in power, the ICT exports grew 34.5pc sequentially per month and did not once decrease over the same period of the preceding year. In absolute terms, they started out at $104m and closed at $260m.

An estimated $2.7bn never made it back to the country, compared to official exports of $2.6bn, in FY23

Unfortunately, the political and economic uncertainty that came afterwards was too much for the industry, and there was a noticeable decline in proceeds. Or at least the money remitted back to the country, even if the actual sales maintained their growth trajectory.

Come May 2022, ie the first full month of the PDM government, that streak was broken, and the ICT exports slipped 7.04pc sequentially. Since then and until December 2023, which includes the caretaker setup, the year-on-year growth rate per month has averaged a disappointing 2.96pc. So, while there are signs of the industry regaining momentum, at least part of it has to do with a low base.

Assuming there hadn’t been any interruption and the growth trajectory had continued, monthly ICT exports would have breached the $300m mark back in August 2022 versus the actual figure of $228m. Needless to say, this counterfactual is a very simplistic exercise and not a robust model. But the point is that the recent performance only seems impressive if we strip it from the historical context and data.

Let’s not miss the forest for the trees though. While political uncertainty did impact the flow of dollars into Pakistan, the more pressing issue here is that a sizable chunk of ICT proceeds are never remitted to the country and instead parked abroad. For years, industry professionals have claimed that the actual exports are far more than what the data reports. But to what extent?

The recent performance of the IT sector seems impressive only if we strip it from the historical context and data

While plenty of big numbers, in billions of dollars, are thrown around regularly, we created an intuitive framework for estimating Pakistan’s undocumented exports.

But before getting to that, the bigger question is, how big is our IT industry? In theory, it should be the average revenue per employee (ARPE) times the total workforce employed by the sector. Though extremely important, neither of these two data points are reported by any regulatory or trade bodies.

Luckily, Systems Limited — the largest IT company in Pakistan — is publicly listed and had an annualised ARPE of $25,182 in 2023. Since bigger organisations usually have economies of scale at play, we discounted it by a factor of 0.5 and ended with an industry-wide average of $12,591. Meanwhile, our internal projections based on the Labour Force Survey of 2017-18, as well as marketing material from the ministry, put total employment in the sector at around 600,000.

Using these two figures yields the total IT sector at around $7.5 billion. Of this, roughly 70pc — or $5.3bn — come from exports, as per estimates reported by Pakistan Software House Association in its last Salary Survey. Given that the official exports in FY23 were $2.6bn, according to the State Bank, the differential, i.e. about $2.7bn, of proceeds never make it back home.

Put another way, more dollars are parked abroad than those that are remitted. It’s a big gap and indicates how the IT sector may not be any more documented than the overall economy.

There are plenty of explanations for this, from taxation concerns to regulatory bottlenecks. While many of them have been taken up by the relevant regulatory authorities, it’s about time something is done to address the root cause: the private sector doesn’t trust the local currency or institutions with its money.

The writer is the co-founder of Data Darbar

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, February 12th, 2024

Why recycling your clothes is not saving the planet

Clothes made from more than two fibres are currently regarded as unrecyclable. Activists call for decrease in consumption: "repair, reuse and upcycle".

AFP 

Published February 15, 2024 


• Clothes made from more than two fibres are currently regarded as unrecyclable

• Activists call for decrease in consumption: ‘repair, reuse and upcycle’

PARIS: In H&M’s flagship Paris store it is hard to find clothes that do not claim to be made from “recycled materials”.

Last year, 79 per cent of the polyester in its collections came from recycled materials, and next year it wants it all to be recycled.

The Swedish fast fashion giant told AFP that recycled material allows the “industry to reduce its dependence on virgin polyester made from fossil fuels”.

The problem is that “93 per cent of all recycled textiles today comes from plastic bottles, not from old clothes”, said Urska Trunk of campaign group Changing Markets.

In other words, from fossil fuels.

And while a plastic bottle can be recycled five or six times, a T-shirt in recycled polyester “can never be recycled again”, said Trunk.

Almost all recycled polyester is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) from plastic bottles, according to the non-profit Textile Exchange.

In Europe, most textile waste is either dumped or burned. Only 22 per cent is recycled or reused — and most of that is turned into insulation, mattress stuffing or cleaning cloths.

“Less than one per cent of fabric used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing,” the European Commission told AFP.

Recycling textiles is “much more complex than recycling other materials, such as glass or paper”, according to Lenzing, an Austrian manufacturer famous for its wood-based fibres.

Unrecyclable

For a start, clothes made from more than two fibres are for now regarded as unrecyclable.

A model walks the runway during the Romeo Hunte runway show during New York Fashion Week in New York City on Feb 13, 2024. — AFP


Those clothes that can be recycled must be sorted by colour, and then have zips, buttons, studs and other material removed.

It is often costly and labour intensive, say experts, though pilot projects are beginning to appear in Europe, said Greenpeace’s Lisa Panhuber.

However, the technology is “in its infancy”, according to Trunk.

Reusing cotton may seem like the obvious answer. But when cotton is recycled, the quality drops so much that it often has to be woven with other materials, experts say, bringing us slap back to the problem of mixed fabrics.

To square the recycling circle, fashion brands have instead been using recycled plastic — to the anger and frustration of the food industry, which pays for the collection of the used PET bottles.

Recycling polyester is another dead end, according to Lauriane Veillard, of the Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) network.

It is often impure and mixed with other materials like elastane or Lycra, which “prevents any recycling”, she insisted.

Carbon footprint

So where do all those mountains of unrecyclable polyester and mixed fabrics end up after Western consumers dutifully bring them to recycling bins?

Nearly half of textile waste collected in Europe ends up in African secondhand markets — most controversially in Ghana — or more often it is tipped into “open landfills”, according to European Environ­ment Agency (EEA) figures from 2019.

Another 41pc of the bloc’s textile waste goes to Asia, it added, mostly “to dedicated economic zones where they are sorted and processed”.

“The used textiles are mostly downcycled into industrial rags or filling, or re-exported for recycling in other Asian countries or for reuse in Africa,” the agency said.

NGOs told AFP much of Europe’s waste clothes sent to Asia go to “Export Processing Zones”, which Paul Roeland of the Clean Clothes Campaign said were “notorious for providing ‘lawless’ exclaves, where even the low labour standards of Pakistan and India are not observed”.

Exporting “clothes to countries with low labour costs for sorting is also a horror in terms of carbon footprint”, said Marc Minassian of Pellenc ST, which makes optical sorting machines used in recycling.

Recycling a ‘myth’

The terrible truth is that “recycling is a myth for clothing”, Greenpeace’s consumer expert Panhuber insisted.

Others, however, are turning towards new vegetable fibres, with German brand Hugo Boss using Pinatex made from pineapple leaves for some of its sneakers.

But some experts warn that we could be falling into another trap. Thomas Ebele of the SloWeAre label questioned the way these non-woven fibres are held together “in the majority of cases” with thermoplastic polyester or PLA.

It means that while the clothing can be “sometimes broken down” it is not recyclable, he said.

“Biodegradable does not mean compostable,” he warned, saying that some of these fibres have to be broken down industrially.

But beyond all that, “the biggest problem is the amount of clothes being made”, said Celeste Grillet of Carbone 4.

For Panhuber and Greenpeace, the solution is simple: buy fewer clothes.

“We have to decrease consumption,” she said — repair, “reuse and upcycle”.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2024

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LONG READ

Dying to work abroad:
Why Nepalese migrants are fighting other people’s wars

HARRIS AMJAD

In Russia and beyond, those desperate for work are sacrificing their lives and livelihoods.

The migration of Nepalese soldiers to Russia has taken place through illegal channels as Kathmandu has no bilateral arrangements with Moscow to provide troops

 (Getty Images)

Last month, on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement Summit, Nepal appealed to Russia “not to recruit Nepalese nationals into the country’s army and to help repatriate those who have already joined the forces”. According to data, at least 200 Nepalese youths have joined the Russian Army, with 12 already having lost their lives fighting in the war in Ukraine. In June last year, there were also reports that migrant youths from Nepal were joining the Wagner Group, the private military company involved in, among other conflicts, the Russia–Ukraine war. All these migrations have taken place through illegal channels as Nepal has no bilateral arrangements with Russia to provide soldiers.

So, the question is, what is leading these youths to such extreme migration patterns?

As with any case of migration, there are push and pull factors. For workers and their families, the potential to earn higher wages and gain Russian citizenship constitutes the major pull factors. Equally, the prospect of unemployment and low wages in their home country generates significant motivation to leave. The Indian Army’s Agnipath (Fire Warrior) scheme is also contributing to the illegal migration of Nepalese soldiers to Russia. Where the Indian Army used to recruit full-time Nepalese warriors, the famed Gurkha regiment, it now recruits through a tour-of-duty-style scheme that replaces permanent employment with four-year contracts and no pension benefits. With Nepalese authorities halting the recruitment program and demanding better terms, aspirants are seeking alternative employment avenues.

These alternatives include jobs that sometimes jeopardise lives, with migrant Nepalese workers suffering gross labour injustices and, in extreme cases, work-related deaths. A notable case is the labour injustices that occurred in the build-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Driven by the pull of higher wages, many Nepalese men migrated to Qatar to form a significant chunk of the labour force for tournament-related construction. Inspirational stories of the transformative nature of remittances sent back home often distort the outlook of these migrants who seek a better life for themselves and their families. But on-the-ground realities are quite different. Forced to work long hours in extreme weather and provided with poor living conditions, several migrants lost their lives.

High remittances are accompanied by the increasing vulnerability and exploitation of workers abroad, and a worrying escalation in deaths. Close to 4700 Nepalese migrant workers reportedly lost their lives between 2019 and 2023

In less extreme cases, such as migrant flows to Malaysia, Nepalese migrants often fall prey to exploitative networks. Many migrants pay extortionate “recruitment fees” to employment agencies, meaning they begin their work journey in debt or under disproportionate financial stress. As a result, employers enjoy significant leverage over the workers to exploit their rights.

Between 2019 and 2022, Nepal’s Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security issued more than 1.1 million labour approvals for out-migration. The remittances sent by these workers form a key component of the Nepalese economy, with a record inflow of Rs1.22 trillion (approximately US$9.17 billion) in the 2022–23 fiscal year. However, these high remittances are accompanied by the increasing vulnerability and exploitation of workers abroad, and a worrying escalation in deaths. Close to 4700 Nepalese migrant workers reportedly lost their lives between 2019 and 2023.

The unfortunate reality is that the government in Kathmandu faces an insurmountable challenge in tackling the youth unemployment rate, which currently stands at 19.2 per cent. The figure seems even worse when one considers that close to 60 per cent of Nepal’s population is under the age of 30, suggesting that the out-migration crisis is only expected to worsen.

The increases in migration and exploitation highlight the need for greater regulation to ensure minimum working standards. A concerted effort to clamp down on unofficial recruitment agencies and extortionate “recruitment fees” should be the priority of the Nepalese government. The administration should also consider involving the many local non-profits and government agencies dealing with migrant labour issues as stakeholders in a broad public information campaign. Such a campaign could help to redirect workers towards official and ethical migration channels. Increased government-to-government bilateral engagement with major labour importers, such as the Gulf states and Malaysia, to multiply official channels for migration should also be prioritised.

Fighting to stay alive or, quite literally, dying to work abroad – whichever way you look at Nepalese youth migration, the picture is grim. Kathmandu might have limited capacity to redress the root causes of out-migration, but increased regulation efforts will certainly improve the outcomes.

LOWY INSTITUTE