Freelancing allure: short-term gain, long-term pain?

Initiatives like e-Rozgar and DigiSkills.pk trained over half a million individuals to become freelancers

In the early 1990s, Pakistan’s government championed the use of CNG vehicles as a means to lessen reliance on imported petroleum and promote domestic natural gas. Generous subsidies were granted to CNG stations, vehicle manufacturers and consumers. However, this policy was grounded in imprecise statistics regarding domestic natural gas reserves and the anticipated shift towards CNG. By the mid-2000s, with approximately 3.5 million CNG vehicles on the road, the government’s stance shifted. Taxes on CNG fuel and vehicles surged, compelling many to revert their vehicles to gasoline. This back-and-forth conversion led to significant wear and tear on vehicles, diminishing their performance. This policy flip-flop reduced high-performing vehicles to bellow average. The mirrors another area of concern: the approach towards potential higher education students.

Driven by the notion that Pakistan, with its vast human resources akin to China and India, could offer cheap labour to the developed world, the government has been pushing for freelancing to boost its foreign reserves. Initiatives like e-Rozgar and DigiSkills.pk were launched, training over half a million individuals, mostly university students, to become freelancers. The government’s commitment to this direction is evident with investments like the National Freelance Training Program, which has a budget of Rs367.2 million. But is this truly the right policy direction?

The essence of an education system is to fuel a nation’s economy. Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate economist, has lucidly illustrated that while higher secondary graduates typically handle tasks requiring lower-order thinking and help in sustaining the growth a country’s economy, the graduates of higher education are trained on higher-order thinking tasks to add value to economy. Whereas, the top-tier higher education graduates, who innovate, publish, register patorns and start groundbreaking ventures, take the country’s economy to the next level.

The USA and European countries have recognised this quite earlier, and investeged in establishing higher education institutes to produce the top-tier graduates, while outsourced the lower-order tasks to countries like China and India. These countries, while accepting such tasks, ensured their own top-tier students were shielded from cheap outsourced tasks, focusing instead on high-tech ventures and demanding technology transfers from the West.

Pakistan, however, seems to have missed this nuance. The push for freelancing, especially in premier higher education institutes, has been aggressive. The allure of easy money through tasks like content writing, graphic design and virtual assistance has diverted the attention of our brightest minds. Why would they pursue specialised fields that offer initial salaries of 35k to 50k when they can earn up to 400k from home? This shift in focus has had its short-term benefits, with freelancers contributing up to $500 million to the economy in 2018. But at what cost?

The technological advancements of the developed world have begun to eclipse these freelancing opportunities. The introduction of platforms like ChatGPT, Midjourney, OpenAI Codex, and Emotion AI has rendered many freelancing jobs obsolete. Predictions for 2024 suggest that the rise of AI will further diminish freelancing opportunities.

In our quest for quick gains, we’ve inadvertently redirected our brightest minds from paths of innovation to short-term freelancing roles. Now, as the world shifts and these roles become redundant, our top students find themselves ill-equipped to revert to their original paths of potential innovation and leadership. Much like the vehicles that were converted from petrol to CNG and back, our brightest minds have been subjected to a policy-driven wear and tear. The challenge now is to recalibrate and find a way to harness their potential once again, ensuring that they can drive our nation forward with the vigor and innovation they once promised.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2023.

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