Angh' shows us Naga history from the inside
The film, set in a Nagaland jungle in the 1960s, is about the chief of an indigenous ethnic tribe, the last visible proof of a culture.
Theja Rio’s Angh ends with a line sharp enough to double as an epitaph: "Today, Nagaland is the most Baptist state in the world." What precedes it is the beginning of that ending—a haunting account of how a state on India’s margins was drawn into a colonial fold it never fully chose. In that, Rio’s debut feature measures the toll of that assimilation on a single family, a village, and an entire history. It is also an act of correction; Naga history has rarely been told from the inside, and Angh insists on being one of the few records of a past that has remained largely ignored.
Set in a remote Nagaland jungle near the Indo-Myanmar border in the early 1960s, Angh follows Anghba (played by Anglong Konyak), the chief of a Konyak—an indigenous ethnic tribe—village that has otherwise emptied out. His people left gradually, one household at a time, drawn to a new settlement built around an American mission nearby, where they now dress in Western clothes, attend church and school, and speak English instead of Konyak. What’s left behind is Anghba, his ailing wife, and Atmao, his young, mute son—the last visible proof of a culture the rest of the village has already traded away.
The arrival of an American missionary (Douglas Henshall) sets what is left of that transformation in motion. Rio is precise about the mechanics: conversion moves through gifts, comforts, small kindnesses, each one quietly reframing Konyak life as something lacking rather than whole. Atmao, still debating what his father has already decided against, becomes the missionary’s real target: his attention drawn, gift by gift, toward the church and away from his father’s belief. Angh resists sentimentality throughout, observing this erosion at close range. What lands, by the end, isn’t a single tragic moment but the accumulated weight of many small ones.
Anghba wears ornaments of brass and bone at his ears, a figure who looks entirely outside of time. That illusion doesn't survive the film's next sequence: Anghba's wife is dying and when the missionary arrives with help, accompanied by villagers who have already converted, Anghba turns him away, knowing what accepting would cost him. When she dies, he puts her to rest through indigenous funerary rites—graphic and unflinching—that end with the sacrifice of an animal. Rio doesn't look away from it and neither does the camera, but Atmao does, watching with visible discomfort.
Premiering as part of the Platform lineup at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Angh is the only Indian film in competition this year. Platform is the festival’s sole competitive section built for emerging and established directorial voices, where the winner qualifies for the Best International Feature Film race at the Oscars.
That distinction isn’t lost on Rio: "I definitely do think about where I want my films to go and which audiences they need to find, especially coming from a region that has remained largely underrepresented..."
The film ultimately questions whether we get to decide what we inherit, or whether that gets decided for us by whoever is watching us live. Angh never asks outright what it means to be civilised or who earns the right to decide, but every apple plucked from a fenced orchard and every wince at a father's ritual already answers the question.
Crushed under debt and floods
For migrant workers from Bihar, Nepal's hydropower project building frenzy offered employment. Then came the flood.
By Jyoti Yadav
SARAN, BIHAR
Pintoo Kumar was scrolling on Facebook when a terrifying visual appeared on his screen. A massive wall of muddy, brown roaring water was washing everything in its way—homes, people, roads, and bridges. He recognised it immediately: the hills, the towns, the JCBs, and especially the men in orange jackets and yellow helmets, running for their lives.
He was watching it in Anjni village in Bihar's Saran district, almost 370km away from Nepal's Rasuwa, one of the districts hit hardest by the catastrophic Nepal floods on 26 August.
Just a fortnight ago, he was at the same spot in Rasuwa, wearing the same orange jacket and yellow helmet. He was one among the hundreds of workers contracted to Andritz, an Austrian technology group, building the 216MW Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project, in Rasuwa on the Nepal-Tibet border.
More than 130 people have died, 5,000 rescued and over 5,000 people are still missing since that day. The flood also tore apart nearly a dozen hydropower projects in the Trishuli river basin in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, including Andritz's Upper Trishuli-1 project.
At the time of the disaster, 246 workers were at the Upper Trishuli-1 site. Of them, 112 were rescued and three died. But, 91 are still missing, of which 48 are Indians, most from Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Jharkhand. Overall, 900 workers, nearly half of them migrants, are missing from the dozen hydropower project sites in the region.
On the morning of 26 August, Pintoo, 26, made frantic calls to his fellow workers from Anjni—Manoranjan, Munna, Rahul, Neeraj, Manish, and Jitendra. None of the calls went through, except the one to Munna. He had already boarded a bus home, having taken medical leave a day before. He would arrive in the village in a few hours.
Once Munna was home, they both began speaking to the families of the other workers. "Tumahara bhaiya phone kiya tha? Baadh aail rahi" (Has your brother called? There's been a flood), Pintoo asked Karan Sah, the younger brother of Jitendra.
Jitendra's wife, Babita Devi, dialled the number repeatedly, only to be met with an "out of network area" message each time. Soon, the village drowned in a wave of distress. Families of the five men still in Nepal abandoned whatever they were doing to make calls. It was all they did for the next 24 hours. Karan even went to the local police station that evening to register a complaint that his brother had gone missing in the Nepal flood, without fully knowing the extent of the catastrophe.
Over the next few days, four of the missing workers would find their way home to Anjni, and as each one struggled back and recounted their stories, Jitendra's family's hopes sank.
Jitendra Sah, 33, and Manish Kumar, 31, were the last of the seven workers to leave Anjni village for Nepal in July. Jitendra was carrying a mounting debt: ₹60,000 at an interest rate of 4.5%, spent on his wife's hysterectomy; ₹17,000 in pending school fees; the continuing tuberculosis treatment for his 10-year-old eldest daughter, Ritika, and the repayment of the last instalment of a loan taken to build their home's cement roof.
Jitendra had landed the job with a monthly salary of ₹30,000 after a break of eight months taken to care for his wife. "He told me we would be able to buy milk for children, and I could eat well to recover from my surgery," says Babita, 29.
He had worked at Andritz's Gandhi Sagar Pumped Storage Project in Madhya Pradesh as a grinder man, and other workers from that project had told him about the job in Nepal.
Married in 2015, Jitendra and Babita have four children; the youngest, Adit, is one-and-a-half years old. Jitendra studied only up to class VIII and began working when he turned 18. His younger brother, Karan, now a welder, started at 17.
Over the years, Jitendra's work took him to remote locations in Uttarakhand, Hyderabad, and across other hydro projects in India. "This was his 10th or 12th job," Babita says.
THE STORY OF MILLIONS
"By the time we turn 18, the age of our first vote, we have already become migrants," says Munna, 31.
None of them could study beyond class VIII. Most of them belong to Other Backward Class or Extreme Backward Class categories in Bihar, groups which have a low share of landholding in the state.
Anjni, a village of 2,500 people, lies about 45km from Patna, Bihar's capital. Every household has men scattered across India's cities or across the border in Nepal, working as daily wage labourers.
It was Manoranjan, 39, who first left for Rasuwa in January, followed by Pintoo, then Rahul, 25, in April, with Neeraj, 42, and Munna trailing them.
The Trishuli-Bhotekoshi corridor, where Nepal's new hydropower projects are clustered, is a hub of opportunity for contract migrant workers like them, young men with machine skills such as welding and cabling learnt while working in power projects across India.
Nepal is struggling with an out-migration crisis. Thousands of young skilled and semi-skilled men and women leave the country each year in search of work in India, UAE and Europe, creating demand for migrant workers from Bihar, which lies just across the border.
"For Bihar's migrant workers, Nepal offers a relatively accessible labour market because of its proximity and open border. Workers who have acquired specialised skills in construction and hydropower projects in India can find opportunities in Nepal without high travel costs and immigration barriers associated with migrating farther afield," says Pushp Ranjan, a Delhi-based journalist specialising in Sino-Nepal relations and US affairs.
A vast network of migrants, relatives and agents spreads the word about these jobs. "Bihari workers form a crucial part of the workforce in Nepal's hydropower projects, particularly in the drilling and tunnel work required in the difficult Himalayan terrain," explains Ranjan. "In addition to their work at energy sites, they act as the fundamental support for the development of road networks, bridges and commercial real estate in the rapidly growing urban areas such as Kathmandu, Birganj and Biratnagar."
By the time the men from Anjni arrived in Rasuwa, the project was nearly complete, set to meet the December 2026 deadline. Jitendra's last location was the workshop office at Salettar in Rasuwa, about 40ft above the Trishuli river. It was wiped out.
Another group of workers, including Rahul, Neeraj and Manish, had left to work inside the main tunnel, at a higher elevation about 20 minutes from the workshop for a 7.15am shift.
Manoranjan, who was off duty, decided to go to the market to buy essentials such as shaving kits and soaps. "Bring me a pair of socks" were the last words Manoranjan heard from Jitendra, a welder, before he left at 8.12am. When Manoranjan reached Shanti Bazar, walking the 8-9km distance, he overheard a woman shouting, "the river is flooding".
Manoranjan began climbing a hill, with 50-60 others, and did not stop for 15 minutes until he reached a spot he thought was safe. His phone had no network, leaving him unable to call anyone or get information. "The warnings could not travel as fast as the flood," he reflects.
He was stranded for 20 hours, and undertook an arduous journey on foot and by bus, first to Kathmandu, then Birgunj, crossing the Nepal-India border, and boarding another bus to finally reach home on 28 August.
ESCAPING THE TUNNEL
Inside the tunnel, Rahul, Neeraj and Manish were among the hundreds working in the mechanical and civil teams. Rahul was on the mechanical team, almost 1km from the main gate into the tunnel. That morning, he was on the generator floor, in unit No.3, he recalls. "When a gust of wind came rushing into the tunnel, I was checking battery alignment," he says. "An evil sound followed, and within seconds the gush of water." He dropped the battery and ran. "Within a minute, the two floors were buried in muddy water," he recounts.
Rahul swam out of the nearest emergency exit with two workers from Assam. The water left as quickly as it entered, but it left rocks, sludge, and mud. Neeraj, Manish and others, trudged through the mud and water to make their way out.
Rahul saw a colleague from Bihar's Raxaul, a town on the India-Nepal border, get hit by the speeding water and "kichad mein dab gaya" (he was buried in mud).
"When we came out, we found nothing. The camp, the machinery, the men—all were gone," says Rahul. A supervisor named Sandeep counted them—110 of them had made it out of the tunnel.
For the next 24 hours, they stood outside the tunnel. Bruised, soaked, and battered by incessant rain, they covered themselves with tarpaulin sheets and waited to be rescued. "Some of us tried to climb through the hills, and others used sticks to cross the river," he recalls. Nothing worked. Then they saw the helicopters.
They were airlifted by a helicopter and brought to an army camp in a town about 15 minutes away by air. From there, they were transported to Kathmandu in jeeps.
Like Manoranjan, they then made their way from Kathmandu to Anjni, changing vehicles and arriving on 30 August.
The same day, Karan left for Nepal to search for his brother. Through a network of migrants, he traced the family of Govind Bharti, who had been in the workshop with Jitendra and was missing.
Bharti's family lives in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia district. Govind's younger brother, Suraj, a labourer in a thread mill in Surat, was also searching for him.
"If Govind is found, my brother will be found too and vice versa," Karan reasoned.
Karan took a loan of ₹30,000 from fellow villagers and set out with two relatives and Suraj. They boarded a bus from Anjni to Raxaul, crossed the border on foot, and from Birgunj went to Kathmandu.
In Kathmandu, on the first day, they went to the Indian embassy and also met Ashok Thapa, the contractor who had employed the men. They submitted the documents he requested: details of Aadhaar cards, addresses, and the wives' Indian bank accounts.
The next day, they went to the hospitals looking for bodies, and on the third day to the army camp where survivors were being brought. The following day, Karan made the return journey to Anjni with no further information about his brother and only ₹13,000 in his pocket.
THE LONG ROAD TO AID
Jitendra's family has not performed the symbolic last rites yet. "We don't have any money to hold the last rites or the funeral feast," he says.
On 10 September, the salaries of those who'd survived were deposited in their accounts in Nepal's Global Bank. Neeraj's swollen legs have finally healed with painkillers, and Rahul's mother says the nightmares have reduced.
But for Jitendra's family, the long wait for aid is another nightmare. Without the complex paperwork demanded by the bureaucracies of both countries, they cannot have his salary and compensation transferred to them.
"We are in contact with the families of the missing and deceased personnel or their known contacts and are providing practical and financial emergency assistance as well as counselling and support through our local teams. Immediate financial relief is already being provided," an Andritz spokesperson said in an emailed response to queries from Lounge.
An Andritz representative in Kathmandu, speaking on condition of anonymity, says salaries and compensation for the missing Indian workers are yet to reach Indian bank accounts, as the process requires clearances from Nepal Rastra Bank, the country's central bank. "As soon as we receive the certificates from the next of kin of the missing, the amount will be deposited," the person says.
To access the financial assistance, families such as the Sahs need a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the state government, along with documents identifying the nominee. These documents must be routed through the Indian embassy. Once the process is completed, ₹5 lakh will be deposited into the nominee's bank account. "The Nepali workers' families have already accessed this assistance, but for Indian nationals there are several compliance requirements involving Andritz, Rastra Bank and the Indian embassy," another Andritz representative says.
"The NOC is required to establish the nominee's relationship with the employee. From the bank's perspective, it serves as a compliance measure to ensure that no other claimant emerges later," he says, adding that Andritz has to act as a guarantor for the claim. He says that once rescue operations are officially called off, the Nepal government will issue death certificates for the missing. Only then will full and final settlements, including insurance and compensation claims, be processed.
Meanwhile, Jitendra's children have not gone to school and Karan has not gone back to work as he wrangles with the paperwork. On 17 September, he took his parents to the Saran district administration office for permission to get a DNA test and claim the climate justice aid offered by Andritz. On 22 September, he took his father to Patna for the DNA test. He paid ₹12,500 to two advocates to get a court-authorised undertaking stating that Babita is Jitendra's wife and next of kin. Their mountain of debt continues to grow.
Jyoti Yadav is an independent journalist and the author of Faith & Fury: Covid Dispatches from India's Hinterland.
THINK
AI is making online shopping less safe
While doomsday predictions of AI ending human civilisation have a degree of glamour attached to them, real-world, day-to-day abuse of AI sometimes goes under the radar. Especially when it comes to fraud in the online marketplace. As Abhishek Baxi writes in this thought-provoking story, consumers don't usually think about trust when ordering products online, they only notice it when something goes wrong. And the increasing sophistication of AI models is making the threat of online fraud even more urgent. Baxi speaks with experts, and representatives of online retailers like Amazon, to find out what brands are doing to counter this threat and keep consumers' trust.
Crushed under debt and floods
Sub-headline: For migrant workers from Bihar, Nepal's hydropower project building frenzy offered employment. Then came the flood.
Byline: SARAN, BIHAR
Author: Jyoti Yadav
Pintoo Kumar was scrolling on Facebook when a terrifying visual appeared on his screen. A massive wall of muddy, brown roaring water was washing everything in its way—homes, people, roads, and bridges. He recognised it immediately: the hills, the town, the JCBs, and especially the men in orange jackets and yellow helmets, running for their lives.
He was watching it in Anjni village in Bihar’s Saran district, almost 370km away from Nepal’s Rasuwa, one of the districts hit hardest by the catastrophic Nepal floods on 26 August.
Just a fortnight ago, he was at the same spot in Rasuwa, wearing the same orange jacket and yellow helmet. He was one among the hundreds of workers contracted to Andritz, an Austrian technology group, building the 216MW Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project, in Rasuwa on the Nepal-Tibet border.
More than 130 people have died, 5,000 rescued and over 5,000 people are still missing since that day. The flood also tore apart nearly a dozen hydropower projects in the Trishuli river basin in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, including Andritz’s Upper Trishuli-1 project.
At the time of the disaster, 246 workers were at the Upper Trishuli-1 site. Of them, 112 were rescued and three died. But, 91 are still missing, of which 48 are Indians, most from Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Jharkhand. Overall, 900 workers, nearly half of them migrants, are missing from the dozen hydropower project sites in the region.
On the morning of 26 August, Pintoo, 26, made frantic calls to his fellow workers from Anjni—Manoranjan, Munna, Rahul, Neeraj, Manish, and Jitendra. None of the calls went through, except the one to Munna. He had already boarded a bus home, having taken medical leave a day before. He would arrive in the village in a few hours.
Once Munna was home, they both began speaking to the families of the other workers. "Tumahara bhaiya phone kiya tha? Baadh aail rahi (Has your brother called? There's been a flood)," Pintoo asked Karan Sah, the younger brother of Jitendra.
Jitendra’s wife, Babita Devi, dialled the number repeatedly, only to be met with an "out of network area" message each time.
Soon, the village drowned in a wave of distress. Families of the five men still in Nepal abandoned whatever they were doing to make calls. It was all they did for the next 24 hours. Karan even went to the local police station that evening to register a complaint that his brother had gone missing in the Nepal flood, without fully knowing the extent of the catastrophe.
Over the next few days, four of the missing workers would find their way home to Anjni, and as each one struggled back and recounted their stories, Jitendra’s family’s hopes sank.
Jitendra Sah, 33, and Manish Kumar, 31, were the last of the seven workers to leave Anjni village for Nepal in July. Jitendra was carrying a mounting debt: ₹60,000 at an interest rate of 4.5%, spent on his wife’s hysterectomy; ₹17,000 in pending school fees; the continuing tuberculosis treatment for his 10-year-old eldest daughter, Ritika; and the repayment of the last instalment of a loan taken to build their home’s cement roof.
Jitendra had landed the job with a monthly salary of ₹30,000 after a break of eight months taken to care for his wife. "He told me we would be able to buy milk for children, and I could eat well to recover from my surgery," says Babita, 29. He had worked at Andritz’s Gandhi Sagar Pumped Storage Project in Madhya Pradesh as a grinder man, and other workers from that project had told him about the job in Nepal.
Married in 2015, Jitendra and Babita have four children; the youngest, Adit, is one-and-a-half years old. Jitendra studied only up to class VIII and began working when he turned 18. His younger brother, Karan, now a welder, started at 15.
Over the years, Jitendra’s work took him to remote locations in Uttarakhand, Hyderabad, and across other hydro projects in India. "This was his 10th or 12th job," Babita says.
THE STORY OF MILLIONS
Jitendra’s story of migration and debt is similar to that of Manoranjan, Munna, Manish, Neeraj, Rahul, and Pintoo. "By the time we turn 18, the age of our first vote, we have already become migrants," says Munna, 31.
None of them could study beyond class VIII. Most of them belong to Other Backward Caste or Extreme Backward Caste categories in Bihar, groups which have a low share of landholding in the state.
Anjni, a village of 2,500 people, lies about 45km from Patna, Bihar’s capital. Every household has men scattered across India’s cities or across the border in Nepal, working as daily wage labourers.
It was Manoranjan, 39, who first left for Rasuwa in January, followed by Pintoo, then Rahul, 25, in April, with Neeraj, 42, and Munna trailing them.
The Trishuli-Bhotekoshi corridor, where Nepal’s new hydropower projects are clustered, is a hub of opportunity for contract migrant workers like them, young men with machine skills such as welding and cabling learnt while working in power projects across India.
Nepal is struggling with an out-migration crisis. Thousands of young skilled and semi-skilled men and women leave the country each year in search of work in India, UAE and Europe, creating demand for migrant workers from Bihar, which lies just across the border.
"For Bihar’s migrant workers, Nepal offers a relatively accessible labour market because of its proximity and open border. Workers who have acquired specialised skills in construction and hydropower projects in India can find opportunities in Nepal without high travel costs and immigration barriers associated with migrating farther afield," says Pushp Ranjan, a Delhi-based journalist specialising in Sino-Nepal relations and US affairs.
A vast network of migrants, relatives and agents spreads the word about these jobs. "Bihari workers form a crucial part of the workforce in Nepal’s hydropower projects, particularly in the drilling and tunnel work required in the difficult Himalayan terrain," explains Ranjan. "In addition to their work at energy sites, they act as the fundamental support for the development of road networks, bridges and commercial real estate in the rapidly growing urban areas such as Kathmandu, Birganj and Biratnagar."
By the time the men from Anjni arrived in Rasuwa, the project was nearly complete, set to meet the December 2026 deadline. Jitendra’s last location was the workshop office at Salettar in Rasuwa, about 40ft above the Trishuli river. It was wiped out.
Another group of workers, including Rahul, Neeraj and Manish, had left to work inside the main tunnel, at a higher elevation about 20 minutes from the workshop for a 7.15am shift.
Manoranjan, who was off duty, decided to go to the market to buy essentials such as shaving kits and soaps. "Bring me a pair of socks," were the last words Manoranjan heard from Jitendra, a welder, before he left at 8.12am. When Manoranjan reached Shanti Bazar, walking the 8-9km distance, he overheard a woman shouting, "the river is flooding".
Manoranjan began climbing a hill, with 50-60 others, and did not stop for 15 minutes until he reached a spot he thought was safe. His phone had no network, leaving him unable to call anyone or get information. "The warnings could not travel as fast as the flood," he reflects.
He was stranded for 20 hours, and undertook an arduous journey on foot and by bus, first to Kathmandu, then Birgunj, crossing the Nepal-India border, and boarding another bus to finally reach home on 28 August.
ESCAPING THE TUNNEL
Inside the tunnel, Rahul, Neeraj and Manish were among the hundreds working in the mechanical and civil teams. Rahul was on the mechanical team, almost 1km from the main gate into the tunnel. That morning, he was on the generator floor, in unit No. 3, he recalls. "When a gust of wind came rushing into the tunnel, I was checking battery alignment," he says. "An evil sound followed, and within seconds the gush of water." He dropped the battery and ran. "Within a minute, the two floors were buried in muddy water," he recounts.
Rahul swam out of the nearest emergency exit with two workers from Assam. The water left as quickly as it entered, but it left rocks, sludge, and mud. Neeraj, Manish and others, trudged through the mud and water to make their way out.
Rahul saw a colleague from Bihar’s Harsang, a town on the India-Nepal border, get hit by the speeding water and "keechad mein dab gaya (he was buried in mud)."
"When we came out, we found nothing. The camp, the machinery, the men—all were gone," says Rahul. A supervisor named Sandeep counted them—110 of them had made it out of the tunnel.
For the next 24 hours, they stood outside the tunnel. Bruised, soaked and battered by incessant rain, they covered themselves with tarpaulin sheets and waited to be rescued. "Some of us tried to climb through the hills, and others used sticks to cross the river," he recalls. Nothing worked. Then they saw the helicopters.
They were airlifted by a helicopter and brought to an army camp in a town about 5 minutes away by air. From there, they were transported to Kathmandu in jeeps.
Like Manoranjan, they then made their way from Kathmandu to Anjni, changing vehicles and arriving on 30 August.
The same day, Karan left for Nepal to search for his brother. Through a network of migrants, he traced the family of Govind Bharti, who had been in the workshop with Jitendra and was missing. Bharti’s family lives in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district. Govind’s younger brother, Suraj, a labourer in a thread mill in Surat, was also searching for him.
"If Govind is found, my brother will be found too, and vice versa," Karan reasoned. Karan took a loan of ₹30,000 from fellow villagers and set out with two relatives and Suraj. They boarded a bus from Anjni to Raxaul, crossed the border on foot, and from Birgunj went to Kathmandu.
In Kathmandu, on the first day, they went to the Indian embassy and also met Ashok Thapa, the contractor who had employed the men. They submitted the documents he requested: details of Aadhaar cards, addresses, and the wives’ Indian bank accounts.
The next day, they went to the hospitals looking for bodies, and on the third day to the army camp where survivors were being brought. The following day, Karan made the return journey to Anjni with no further information about his brother and only ₹3,000 in his pocket.
THE LONG ROAD TO AID
Jitendra’s family has not performed the symbolic last rites yet. "We don’t have any money to hold the last rites or the funeral feast," he says.
On 10 September, the salaries of those who’d survived were deposited in their accounts in Nepal's Global Bank. Neeraj’s swollen legs have finally healed with painkillers, and Rahul’s mother says the nightmares have reduced.
But for Jitendra’s family, the long wait for aid is another nightmare. Without the complex paperwork demanded by the bureaucracies of both countries, they cannot have his salary and compensation transferred to them.
"We are in contact with the families of the missing and deceased personnel or their known contacts and are providing practical and financial emergency assistance as well as counselling and support through our local teams. Immediate financial relief is already being provided," an Andritz spokesperson said in an emailed response to queries from Lounge.
An Andritz representative in Kathmandu, speaking on condition of anonymity, says salaries and compensation for the missing Indian workers are yet to reach Indian bank accounts, as the process requires clearances from Nepal Rastra Bank, the country’s central bank. "As soon as we receive the certificates from the net of kin of the missing, the amount will be deposited,"
AI's unseen public costs
AI-led social media trends seem like fun and games, but their invisible damages will add up in the long run
By Somak Ghoshal (somak.g@livemint.com)
Recently, social media users around the world were swept up in a trend of revisiting the 1980s using AI-generated images of themselves. As with the Studio Ghibli trend, this too was treated like harmless fun, though its unseen impact is far more serious.
In the case of the Ghibli makeover, issues of copyright and plagiarism led the protests against public misuse of AI tools. Less talked about was the cost of energy, water and other resources needed to generate the images. Following the virality of the 1980s trend, however, the environmental footprint of such exercises has been more widely flagged by activists, AI ethicists and media outlets.
While the numbers may vary (depending on the model, complexity of the task, processor used, and so on), generating a typical AI image requires 0.01–0.29 kilowatt hours of electricity, a Times of India report points out. That's enough to power a 10-watt LED bulb for 17 minutes and accounts for 29ml of water usage, which goes up to 41 litres for creating complex videos. Now imagine millions generating such visuals and videos, and the scale of the crisis becomes clear.
The irony of the 1980s trend was deepened by a seemingly impassioned plea by Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, made around the time, urging fellow entrepreneurs to slow down the development of AI models, arguing in favour of safety and stronger regulation. Less than two weeks later, he has reportedly undergone a change of mind, as he now contemplates the release of a new model to counter the rise of rival OpenAI's new GPT-5 Astra.
Amodei's volte-face is neither surprising nor unique. It was disingenuous, anyway, to make a case for pacing the development of AI tools when the latter are ubiquitous in public life, integrated with smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices. Major social media platforms supply in-built AI tools, tempting users to play with it. AI slop and AI-generated content is pervasive, and addictive, even when they are obviously fake. If for the hoi polloi, these tools are mere playthings, for many professional creators, they are tools of their trade.
"Someone sent me a video by an influencer where they say it takes less water to generate their AI content than to make a burger or a cotton shirt," says Jibu Elias, AI ethicist and author of the recent book, The New Divide. If some rely on false equivalences to justify the damage we are collectively causing to the planet, others embrace ignorance as bliss. As with the climate crisis, the cost of AI illiteracy will remain abstract until it hits us at an individual level.
It would be absurd to expect the world to go back to a pristine analogue mode or disregard the positive gains of AI, especially in medicine and community-based initiatives. "Lately, I have switched to open-source, application-based, local models for my work," Elias says. Individual intent matters, even though changing minds at scale requires patience and perseverance. "[American biologist] Rachel Carson wrote about the harmful effects of agricultural DDT in her 1962 book The Silent Spring," he adds, "But it took 10 years to get it officially banned."
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