Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Bill Gates in Bihar to check its pulse
“We come not as preachers, but more like cheerleaders.” Microsoft founder and worldrenowned philanthropist Bill Gates had said this a few months before his high- profile China and India trip which was meant to promote charity.
Embarking on the ‘cheer leading’ journey on Wednesday, Gates, along with his wife Melinda, sat down with poor villagers in an underdeveloped village of Bihar to get the first- hand knowledge of their problems.
Lending a patient ear to the people at a Mahadalit basti in Jamsaut near Danapur in Patna, the Gates couple held an open court in the village, sat on the ground and inquired at length about issues related to health, education and overall development of the area.
The software billionaire, who had come to Bihar to take forward the health- related programmes pledged by his philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, toured the village, and also visited a poor villager’s roofless house to see the living conditions.
Gates said that he had come to Bihar — his second visit in ten months — to see how the health projects were going on in the state. “ I am here to know about how the health projects funded by the foundation in partnership with the Bihar government are working to reduce infant and maternal mortality, besides institutional delivery and immunisation programmes,” he said.
Gates said that Bihar’s success in these fields would be a lesson for other places in the world. He said that the women of the state needed to be educated on the use of certain new vaccines that would bring down the mortality rate.
Gates, who held a joint press conference with chief minister Nitish Kumar later in the day to give details of the projects of his foundation, said that hundreds of thousands of children’s lives could be saved through proper implementation of immunisation programmes.
Melinda, who took a keen interest in knowing about the lifestyle of villagers and their overall awareness about the health- related issues such as immunisation, said that they were very impressed with the Nitish Kumar government.
Nitish said that the foundation had signed a memorandum of cooperation with the state government in 2010 to facilitate better healthcare in the state. He said that the foundation was primarily interested in the health sector, but had also shown interest in the agricultural sector.
The CM said that his government would extend all cooperation to the foundation in helping them carry out their work here.
Gates, whose foundation has pledged $ 1 billion to health and other development projects in India, said that the memorandum of cooperation with the Bihar government would help develop and implement innovative solutions that could speed up statewide improvements in maternal, newborn and childcare services.
The foundation seeks to improve the delivery of timely diagnosis and appropriate care for tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrhoea in Bihar. At the outset, such programmes are being initiated in eight districts — Patna, Gopalganj, Begusarai, Samastipur, Khagaria, Saharsa, east and west Champaran.
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The "Gates Foundation, which has $80 million worth partnership with Bihar government in health sector, has shown its interest in expanding cooperation in agricultural sector too ... said a beaming Gates while lavishing praise on chief minister Nitish Kumar sitting beside him (Times of India, March 27 '11). Why does Bihar need Gates' money? Tamil Nadu gets Indian currency secretly printed in China which is used for numerous freebies to people -- from food to houses to mixers to color TVs to lap top computers, etc. -- for bribes to A. Raja and many other things because of which the Tamils have been calling Bihar and U.P. backward and stupid. This is what I said in my Press Release dated January 17, 2011:-
"In my article titled "A Magical Solution to Disaster Relief" I gave the formula: the government should invite any and all individuals and organizations including companies to "Find a need and fill it and be reimbursed at double your cost" -- in normal times a 50% profit may be enough incentive -- to provide food, shelter. clothing and services to shanty-dwellers and be reimbursed at 50% over their cost; the only condition should be that the goods and services they provide must be ADDITIONAL PRODUCTION and not taken from existing supplies. The shanty-dwellers can also be employed for the production. The government has an unlimited amount of money simply by printing it so long as it is used for PRODUCTION; see my article "How India's Economy Can Grow 30% Per Year Or More" which can be found by a Google/Yahoo search with the title. The above applies to ALL goods and services to fill ALL societal needs."
By suppressing any mention of me in the media via K. Subrahmanyam and C.I.A.-RAW, Tamils have been reaping the benefits of my work while denying them to the stupid North Indians.
Satish Chandra
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