I'm seeing a lot of "What Mr. Gates is doing is great BUT [insert negatives]".
Timing is everything. IMO, this is the perfect timing to start a mission such as the one Mr. Gates is. Why? Well having just been to India last year, my cousins were complaining about how India is filled with geniuses, yet very few who want to take risks (whether it be to help fix the poverty, the political system, or just start cool companies). A couple months after I got back from India (I live in the States), I was talking to my cousins and they were telling me how some cities in the south are really starting to embrace a tech culture and were trying to resemble that of Silicon Valley. And it's grown magnitudes since then; in fact, in recent months, there have been a lot of posts on HN about India's tech expansion.
So Mr. Gates says it well: "To make real progress on the problems of the poorest, you need at least two ingredients: a deep understanding of the problems, and the technical ability to solve them." He probably is going there to better understand some of the problems that exist, but I bet he also understands there are a lot more people there that can help solve these problems. He's a pretty smart guy, I trust he'll actually do good on his visit and it will be constructive to India and its people.
He is a pretty smart guy. He set aside some "feel good" philanthropy and seems to go straight to the heart of things. He's done a lot of good, beyond the money he brings to the table.
Oh come on, Gates is the least damaging Robber Baron we have ever seen and is the one most likely to produce meaningful impact in the robber baron second philanthropic life.
It's one thing wishing that history had thrown up dedicated public servants who also ran vast software empires, but we play the hand we have been dealt. If we lose net neutrality, privacy, if the Internet is used against us, not for us, it's our fault. We can ensure the train runs on the lines we want.
Sorry not meaning to have a rant, just I think gates has stopped being part of the problem now - there will be another one along, probably worse, and we need to engage. Just frustrated. I respect your posts here normally.
You have a short term memory, I don't. This plagues me in all kinds of ways but it is also an asset in many others.
And Gates' most recent dip into my wallet is less than two weeks ago so in fact I don't need all that good a memory to remind me who he is and what he stands for.
Sorry, are you literally saying you have no short-term memory? Or simply saying I should remember Gates' a toons in the 90s etc? If the former I am sorry and wish you the best
How can you categorically claim that he's done a lot of damage? How have you factored in his being a huge part of why the PC became so popular that advances were driven forward dramatically over the last couple of decades and prices have been driven down?
It's like complaining about ads on the web. Without them, a lot of incredible things would have never seen the light of day. Hippies in communes rarely produce much that anyone else cares about, but they sure do a great job of recycling.
"To make real progress on the problems of the poorest, you need at least two ingredients: a deep understanding of the problems, and the technical ability to solve them."
Is technical ability really necessary? Some problems cannot be solved by technology. It may be political solution. It may be a social solution. I think BG is trying to say "technology" can solve everything.
I took technical ability in a more general sense when I read that. I doubt he's saying that all of India's poverty issues can be solved by just throwing computers at them.
Update - Just realized I just fed a troll. Moving on!
Whoa! Hold on there cowboy!
What have we told you about sweeping generalizations??!!
Not every person in India wakes up every morning to fix social issues. They wake up every morning to go to work, feed their families and you know..do what you and I do - when we turn the other way to the glaring poverty and injustice that is visible in our communities.
India, Pessimism, Chailatte... jolly good combination. Spineless, apathy, unfeeling....it is like filling the keyword quota for a job description.
As if Bill Gates is there to fix all of your ruses with India. How about letting him do what he is there to achieve, follow his progress, build upon it and do something even better by involving next generation. Or another option is, sit and critique without adding any value? There are lessons to be learnt in any venture, and this will be no different. Relying upon Bill Gates and a time span of even 10 years to solve all those problems you listed? We are not helping the man who made computers ubiquitous and helped eradicate polio in India. Besides, Bill Gates will be heard by the people in upper echelons and young generation and Aamir Khan will help tap the mass population. I wish them luck, I will be following this social initiative closely. More power to them.
Bill Gates WILL have an impact, even if it's only on a dozen people. So will the people who are inspired by him, and so do the people who have been working with the Indian people for years to make the country better.
The only people who can't fix things like this are people who throw up their hands and say that no one cares. Things can get better, despite the undermining tone of cynics like yourself saying they cannot.
Not sure what your problem is, India or Bill Gates? You seem to have a problem with both.
>>- apathy from upper/middle class towards lower classes
Why in God's name will a middle class guy, who probably is having a thousand different battles in his own life get up every day morning to work for some body poor? By now, 'the poor' need to realize its not somebody else job do their work. Chances are no one ever will, not just in India but anywhere in the world.
>>- willingness from normal citizens to live with human feces on the streets, eat in restaurants with huge garbage piles right in front
How is this any different than the western world during the Industrial revolution? So some place like the US during the great depression?
You seem to be assuming a passing state of a society as its permanent condition. There are plenty of urban/rural housing settlement/societies in India which are as neat and clean as any western city.
>>- spinelessness/cowardness from the voting public
Care to give a few examples??
>>so what if there are smart people in india?
Now that you acknowledge that there are smart people in India. I guess you better prepare for some darn hard competition coming from us.
>> they are spineless/uncompassionate/unfeeling/unprideful.
Seriously??? How is any different than people in any country in the world. Do you think voting matters or is significant even in a country like the US. How many times were the US citizens able to prevent their country from going to war? Or how many times have they been able to change their unemployment problem themselves?
You seem to have a seriously problem with India, no idea why that is so.
> Seriously??? How is any different than people in any country in the world. Do you think voting matters or is significant even in a country like the US. How many times were the US citizens able to prevent their country from going to war? Or how many times have they been able to change their unemployment problem themselves?
They managed to stop an ongoing war once (Vietnam). Other than that, how can you tell when a decision to go to war has been overturned because of civilian activity. It seems that at one point, the US was quite bent on attacking Iran, but that never happened.
>You seem to have a seriously problem with India, no idea why that is so.
This is just conjecture, but seeing as this is Hacker News, perhaps he had to work with Indian IT subcontractors at some point in his life. Without having a grander vision of the world that may easily lead to some practical racism.
What's up with HN lately? It seems like being contrary to contrarian is the new thing these days.
Bill Gates is someone I admired at first, because he built something huge from humble beginnings. Then I reviled him for the damage I saw him cause to the industry. Then I admired him again for the global effect he managed. He is a single person trying to do the best he knows how for humanity at large.
If anyone thinks resources would better be spent in, say, LA, please earn huge loads of cash and make it happen. Much to your chagrin it might benefit someone in India as well.
Bill Gates seems genuinely concerned with elevating the level of humanity as a whole, and if you oppose that? Is this a zero sum game? No, it's not.
I wonder if people would be as vocal if he decided to buy a private island…
Buy a private island, few care and those who might, will most likely fawn in amazement. Decide to take an interest in helping human beings you might not identify/associate with, welcome to the "The White-Savior Industrial Complex"[0].
If he bought a private island instead of doing the charity stuff, then I imagine people would be less vocal just because he would be in the news far less often. Were he to do both, I doubt people would be less vocal. I mean, the guy has got plenty of yachts right? I don't see why an island would be much different.
Dean Kamen bought an island. Few know, even fewer care, and I would say that even fewer fawn in amazement. And he acts outlandish with it! People would care even less about more dull island owners.
I think he was implying Gates building a large, successful corporation from humble beginnings (not his fortune/career/comfy life), which is something hard to do even with lots of disposable income and investors.
Well there are people who will find problems with anything. I mean no matter what you do.
If you were to go out and invent a vaccination to prevent a human a human from ever catching an viral infection. You will likely find people who will criticize you for not solving the hunger problem first.
The lesson is not to take that kind of people seriously.
Have you considered that perhaps he spent his career as ruthless business man as a means to an end? It's hard to make any serious change when you're at the bottom of the totem pole, or even halfway up for that matter.
Ah, that makes it ok then. A bit like the mafiosi that give a lot of money to the church on their death bed, it's just a means to an end, so sorry if you're in the way.
Really, Bill Gates has done some good things in recent memory but if you're going to whitewash his crimes because of that then your moral compass is totally out of whack. I'm happy he's chosen to do good later in life rather than to continue on the road that he was on, at the same time I find it impossible to forget how he got to where he is today.
I don't personally know Gates, and I doubt I ever will. If all I have to go by are his deeds (and that's the case), then he's done a lot of good. He could have bought himself huge truckloads of goodwill, much easier than some of the things he's chosen to focus on.
Mr.Gates is obviously doing this with good intentions, I'm not sure how much this is going to actually help India though.
Having lived in both places, I think India and Africa pretty much have the same deep-rooted culture/religion problem of ignorance, corruption and generally not giving a shit about others. Throwing tons of aid at them isn't going to solve anything. This sort of culture has been accumulated over centuries and isn't going to go away anytime soon. In India, we could actually start with trying to emulate Scandinavian countries considering the number of educated folks we have, but that probably isn't going to scale.
Mr.Gates is trying to solve a NP-hard problem here.
It is facile to blame all of the developing world's problems on "the same deep-rooted culture/religion problem of ignorance, corruption, and generally not giving a shit about others." For starters, aren't there causes of ignorance, corruption, or not giving a shit about others?
> "For starters, aren't there causes of ignorance, corruption, or not giving a shit about others?"
Not really. It's the default state of human kind. Individual rights, scientific enlightenment, and all that were invented by Europeans in the 1500s. Before that, all of human history is pretty brutal and poor.
These things are always local, there where social behaviour is rewarded with riches, and ignorance and corruption staved by judicial enforcement and education.
Not only in the 1500s, but also in the roman empire, the greek civilisation, the ancient arabian, egyptian, chinese, japanese, indian empires you can find evidence of civilisations that practised science, had fair laws and promoted kindness to one another.
That the Europeans receded into blunt stupidity for 1500 years does not mean that we were the first or the last to come out of it again.
edit: I also would like to point out that also after the 1500s European history is quite bloody and brutal.
>And then finally Europeans happened - the same Europeans who invented "individual rights, scientific enlightenment, and all that".
And what was their effect? Governance that, while not fully democratic, was less capricious than that which preceded it. A dampening of some of the worst effects of the caste system. Fewer women burning on pyres. A national language that's internationally prominent, which India has reaped enormous economic benefits from even as the country's leaders deny its value for political reasons (and suppress the poor and entrench their own position by promoting regional languages, while sending their own children to english-speaking schools).
It's fashionable to pretend that colonialism was nothing but evil European exploitation. But the reality is that many of the people at the bottom saw great benefits (and conversely the mother country rarely if ever saw a return on investment).
> It's fashionable to pretend that colonialism was nothing but evil European exploitation.
Please show me where I said that. My point was more towards associating Europeans with "individual rights, scientific enlightenment, and all that".
Of course there were benefits, and some were very important one. But let's not pretend it was purely humanitarian, or just for the benefits of the locals.
I'd strongly suggest you find historical records of The East India company and it's ledgers - the unholy amount of money the English siphoned out of India was an eyeopener to me. Until then, I too believed that colonization was good.
I am not even going into the details of separation of the country, the manner in which it was done, and the massacre that followed.
It was evil exploitation by definition and by reality. There were some benefits I give you that, chief among them is bringing the masses to the democratic political mainstream (speaking only about India; this did not happen in most of Africa)
Mother country? Investment? Show me that place in history where capital flowed in to a colony.
> I think India and Africa pretty much have the same deep-rooted culture/religion problem of ignorance, corruption and generally not giving a shit about others.
>This sort of culture has been accumulated over centuries and isn't going to go away anytime soon.
I agree with the overall sentiment in your post. Some more explanation about the culture in India which is accumulated over "centuries" would be nice. Which centuries are we talking about?
I starts conquest of muslims from 15-16 century , effect of that in society and culture. Then european conquests from 18 century and then british rule for 200 years, first 100 under british east india company and then under queen victoria.
India got its freedom in 1947 but for me it was never free. Indian and african countries were not freed to be developed and stand up for themselves. colonizers made sure of it before granting freedom to these countries. As an Indian living in the capital all my life I can say that I dont see the country getting better until everything that is working here is dismantled and fresh new start happens with new models and technology. Which seem like it will take a long and hard time added with a lot of destruction thats already happening to achieve that.
Caste System(More like Racism. Keeping groups of people away from economic opportunity), Families where people have been desperately poor for generations(poor people create more kids on average and most of them end of poor and desperate)... 100's or millions with no primary education/even literacy...
If you're in a position where you even have to submit a resume or deal with an organization that even knows what affirmative action is, you are already in a better caste than the majority of India.
Interesting that you should mention India and Africa. I'm a South African, whose ancestors migrated from India 100+ years ago, and we still maintain some, tenuous cultural ties to India (my car stereo only plays Bollywood music, for example). I have to say, as painful as it is to admit it, that you may have a point about a culture of "ignorance, corruption and generally not giving a shit about others".
A few weeks ago, the South African government was engulfed in scandal when a family that migrated from India in the early 1990's, the Guptas, managed to land a chartered airliner at the country's main air force base for a wedding, by pulling some strings, and get a police escourt for their wedding party. This is a family that is widely suspected of getting rich by gaining state contracts, with less than clean hands-they managed to ingratiate themselves with both the Mbeki and Zuma administrations, despite the fact that most supporters of the former are spurned by the latter. The outcry over their jet adventure was so great that government heads actually began rolling, although it is suspected that President Zuma was behind the order, and is untouchable. It was later revealed that the Guptas managed to re-value their expensive property in Johannesburg, to an absurdly low amount, so they could avoid paying rates (which they could easily afford at a higher level). I gather that this sort of thing is not uncommon in India.
I am not picking on India alone, lest Indian nationalists assume that I am. Pakistanis who migrated from the 1990's on, managed to exploit the South African department of Home Affairs to the point that a South African passport became fairly worthless (this damage is being repaired, but it will be many years before a South African passport is trusted in the first world).
South African Indians, managed to distance themselves from the Guptas and the Pakistanis (more recent immigrants), and are generally well regarded because as a group, we never aligned ourselves with the apartheid regime - and this has resulted in considerable economic success in post-apartheid South Africa. However, when I think about it, we are also quite corrupt. Zuma and his family have been funded by South African Indians - it was just revealed that Zuma's son lives in a home owned by a Durban Indian's family, and there are numerous other examples, including court cases, of Zuma being funded, and corrupted by Indians.
On a personal level, not a week passes without hearing about some acquaintance doing something crooked. Recently, I heard of someone who didn't bother renewing their driving licence, and being involved in a car crash getting a family member to take the blame. I am surprised that South African Indians have managed to maintain a "reality distortion field", and avoided being characterised as a corrupt group, a description that could easily apply to many (not all) of us.
The fact that diverse groups of South Asian immigrants, separated by time and nationality are all corrupt in South Africa indicates that there is a cultural element to this behavior. I hope blind nationalism and defensiveness (something I have noticed when discussing these matters) don't stand in the way of the necessary introspection.
Last time I was in Pune Gates arrived in Pune unannounced by a private plane and straight away drove to the red-light area (prostitution business area) to meet the social workers there. A lot of local politicians rushed to the place for photo ops. He had to virtually physically fight his way out from them.
If seeing how the poorest live is the purpose of this trip, I am not quite sure I understand why meeting Aamir Khan, the Bollywood star, is a highlight of it and the only one that has a picture in the beautiful poster. What I do sense there is a little bit heroism - he feels like a superhero(and justly so). It's just interesting that every time I hear about Gate's foundation and the wonderful stuff they did, there were also some other high profile name mentioned, be it Warren Buffet or Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe it feels even better to work with other people who also has super hero power?
PS: I have nothing against that mentality. It's just that now I realized it I am more curious about it.
I was startled by the mention of Aamir Khan (who I first learned about by watching the movie Three Idiots) until I did some looking up. I see that Khan is now a social activist, and he has recently been designated a program "ambassador" by UNESCO. Khan apparently cares about his country and its problems, and is using his star power to promote change.
> If seeing how the poorest live is the purpose of this trip, I am not quite sure I understand why meeting Aamir Khan, the Bollywood star, is a highlight of it and the only one that has a picture in the beautiful poster.
To understand this, you may want to look into Aamir's show titled "Satyamev Jayate" [0]. Each episode of the show picks up various issues from healthcare, female foeticide to manual scavenging. All episodes of the show are also available online on Youtube (I assume).
For the benefit of people not from India: Aamir Khan is a super hero around here who is leveraging that popularity to spread a lot of influence on the society and predominantly accepted as the right thing. He has been part of many serious struggles here in India
- He fought against raising a dam for River Narmada which would have displaced a lot of people and disturbed nature.
- He supported an anti-corruption movement
His Satyameva Jayate was a very interesting TV show that brought to light many deep rooted flaws in our system - which were never discussed or taken seriously by the society. It would take many such runs to even get people to wake up and act.
Most of his recent movies (last 10 yrs) are strongly opinionated and have some social cause in them: national pride (lagaan, Rang de basanti), education & dyslexia (taare zameen par), corruption (sarfarosh)
So, here is a person who has been successful in waking up the Indian society and doing few things himself. I think Gates is meeting the right forces which are active here.
If I understand it correctly, Aamir Khan is one of the biggest stars of Indian Cinema and all of his movies have been hit with indian public. Another big thing is, he has been associated with a TV Show, which airs on NDTV (presumably a well known channel) and DD (India's BBC). This TV Show is about perverse social situations in Indian Society and how to make India aware of its evils at the grassroots and take eradication steps. The show has been very well received.
I presume it to be a very good step, tapping into mass appeal of Indian Cinema and collaborating with an actor who has already done work in the field and understand the nuisances. For these initiatives to be successful, you have to pull force behind it. India's polio eradication schemes were massively popular because of various celebrities endorsing it day in and day out. They were the source of major line-ups at vaccination centers.
India has some incredibly promising science in the pipeline that has the potential to change the world such as, for instance, a true male contraceptive:
I love that he highlights that he's going to "Discuss how Indian-made vaccines can save lives in other countries too. . ."
Very cool - I hope that his mission helps bear light on the fact that these emerging world economic powers have much to contribute to the world besides the often reported technology-piracy.
I'd really like a picture of Bill G shaking hands with someone who is basically starving in India. It'd be a picture of the richest person in the world standing with the poorest person in the world, and it'd be a cool testament to the inherent complexity of life.
India would prosper if it is not governed like an empire from Delhi. Each ethnic state must form a republic with full autonomy and power should reach into the hands of citizenry.
Gates is finding a sample where (India) it is easy to implement solutions (knowledge of understanding, having a support system to solve the problems) and then take them to the larger audience. It is debatable if food & nutrition issue of India or Polio in India is comparable to problems in Mosambique or Brazil.
It seems like the basic problems of food, shelter, hygiene, health and education are basic needs and can be solved in similar ways across the nations without having to depend on govt policies.
I think this is a very sound approach. He should however pick a smaller geographical region than India.
Bill Gate's work is amazing but yet the same I wonder why is he meeting people like Amir Khan who are nothing but hypocrites. I am pretty sure Gates will figure out this on his own. :P
While what he's doing is obviously good, I am uneasy with the whole idea that one man accumulates so much wealth in the first place, and then decides as an unelected individual what's best for a country. Having said that, I'm not sure i have a particularly good answer to this conundrum.
Who care if he represents nobody if he do good for humanity? There are lot of people in this world that represent a people and they're rotten.
Think about the representatives that you elect to represent your district. By default, they only represent the interest of your district, but not for the greater good of everyone. Otherwise, they get booted out of office for failure to do their job.
Bill Gate can afford to care about poor people, because he doesn't have to answer to anyone. It's not his job to care for India versus the United States. It's not his job to hate China. It's not his job to ensure 25 years in technological advantages against America's enemies.
It took me a while to understand this thinking but deep down I end up agreeing -- this "billionaire with a heart of gold" is far too familiar to the old thought of "I hope the king is just." We far too often end up with billionaires using their money to fund an art museum or ballet for rich people in the name of charity (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_...).
Living in Seattle, I have several friends who work for the BMGF and there is no doubt they are doing amazing things in the world, but the cynic in me still struggles with the idea that a private citizen is deciding how and where to help. Not like I particularly trust the state to handle these decisions either though, so I am normally left scratching my head and just trying to appreciate the good that Gates is ultimately doing.
We far too often end up with billionaires using their money to fund an art museum or ballet for billionaires in the name of charity
You seem to imply that there's something wrong with funding art museums or ballet... The world needs beauty in it, and if people choose to support the arts in a way from which we all benefit, that's great.
Whether art or disease prevention, applying resources over time in a serious and committed way is probably going to be a big help. The BMGF seems to be doing just that.
It's not just about the money. It's about applying it thoughtfully over a period of time.
"The world needs beauty in it, and if people choose to support the arts in a way from which we all benefit, that's great."
Try to explain why the world needs beauty to the folks of the slums of Mumbai and how this beauty will benefit them. I would imagine that the only beauty that they could find is a hope that their children will get out of the slums and live a more fortunate life than there are now.
I always find it strange that to raise money for charity, sometimes an event (ball, art auction, concert etc) is needed to generate the donations. Why not just short cut the event and just collect the donations?
Art is a pervasive part of all human cultures. To imply that people in the slums of Mumbai somehow can't appreciate beauty is to rob them of their humanity.
There's no reason why you can't support both hunger and arts charities.
Why not just short cut the event and just collect the donations?
Because events punctuate people's calendars and bring people who want the same thing together and gives them a chance to socialise and network.
I find it weird that you start out complaining that the poor don't have enough joy in their life, then turn around and complain that joy shouldn't be used as a mechanism to help them.
I completely agree that we need beauty -- I love the concept of funding the arts, but there have to be priorities and we should not rely on the rich to make decisions like this in the name of charity.
I quoted it lower in the thread, but I LOVE the poem by Gil Scott-Heron "Whitey on the moon" --
"A rat done bit my sister Nell, with Whitey on the moon"
A civilized society doesn't rely on the generosity of philanthropists in order to take care of the most vulnerable among us. We all pay taxes to keep the rats off sister Nell.
How anyone (including the super-wealthy) choose to prioritize how they spend and give away their money, it absolutely is their choice. I personally think Bill Gates has done a better job than almost anyone.
"A civilized society doesn't rely on the generosity of philanthropists in order to take care of the most vulnerable among us."
I don't understand this sort of logic. One of the hallmarks of civilization is people doing the right thing even when they aren't forced to. People marvel at the fact that you can lose your wallet in Japan and get it back without anything missing. Yet you're saying that using force to provide for the needy is somehow more civilized than people doing it voluntarily?
In a civilized society, we'd be able to solve our social problems without forcing people to do it. I'm not sure how we get there, but that's the society I'd rather live in.
I would like the kind of society that doesn't need to use force (legitimized by democratically elected representatives, checks and balances, and the rule of law) to take care of the most vulnerable, but I have yet to see any precedent of that. You mention Japan, they have a very pervasive government social safety net.
Places without effective governments? Those are places where people do routinely die of hunger and treatable disease.
That's an interesting article about how Japan hadn't yet extended their safety net (which includes things like universal health care) to the emerging edge case of mass layoffs, something that just didn't happen in their culture before.
"the number of nonregular workers took off after an easing of labor laws in 1999" .. "To receive unemployment insurance, for instance, workers must have held the same job for at least a year, effectively excluding most temporary workers" .. "Today, 34.5 percent of Japan’s 55.3 million workers are nonregular employees"
Sounds like a third of the workforce is at risk of homelessness any time their temp runs out and this has been developing for ~ 15 years.
Platitudes don't make for a very good argument. How about this: "What if all the aristocrats who sponsored Mozart had pissed it away so that people in Bombay had cleaner latrines?" Exactly. Total waste.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that super rich individuals are themselves a product of their surroundings, and the country that supported them - and that just maybe Bill Gates shouldn't have so many billions. Maybe a lot more of it should have gone to the US in the form of tax, and then the US as a whole could decide how best to help fellow humans around the world. I think you can probably discount this though as the rantings of a 'socialist European'! I never used to be so lefty in my twenties...
I think India needs the exact opposite of Bill Gates. We need more people who could industrialize India fast, employ masses of people and take us on par with China,Japan or Korea. India's political parties are left leaning and try to create Europe styled social safety nets. We need more libertarians and rich lobbyists and more copies of Ayn Rand to change the anti - laissez faire policies we have. It's still easy to start a Delaware C corp over internet from India than to register for a local corporation in most states.
I'm fairly uncomfortable that one elected individual with a fairly small majority and a rapidly declining approval rating can decide what is best for a country. Consolidation of power is the problem; not the method by which it is acquired.
And yet a committee of hundreds is if anything worse (I'd certainly trust any one of my representatives individually over the full house), and some decisions really do need to be made at the national level.
As if elected officials have the best interests of the poor in mind? I suppose they do, but only to the extent that they need those votes. Whether the goal of the Gates Foundation is simply to redeem the image of Microsoft's founder or not, it's doing great things for the downtrodden of the world. Perhaps that's what people like Nobel and Carnegie had in mind as well, cleaning up their PR image. But that's the cynic's view.
If you listen to Bill Gates speak, he honestly sounds like someone who believes what he is saying and backs it up with money. As a rich man he certainly has other options. He can give a hearty "fuck you" or even a dismissive "I don't care" to the world and take his money to do whatever he wants. You know, like Larry Ellison or dozens of other people who've made their fortunes off the public.
Having said that, I'm not sure i have a particularly good answer to this conundrum.
Well, let us know if you do. The speculative opinions of message board nerds is as important as someone who became wealthy and is putting his money where his mouth is.
He was able to acquire wealth because he was able to take risks that most people wouldn't, because of his wealthy background. And if you trace back far enough, most old-money families acquired their wealth through violence (or at least the patronage of a ruler who acquired their wealth by force).
If he's like most westerners who go to India the first thing he's going to say is that these people should learn to use toilets and not throw their trash in the street.
Do those people have nice strong flush toilets in their houses? Regular sanitation service they can afford? Are there third parties which go around cleaning up? Once these things are in place like in the developed world then you are entitled to blame their personal behavior for the problem.
You haven't seen real poverty then. Go visit India someday. (Hint: You will find kids that have to work, beg, get abused just so they can eat once, often rotten or throw away food. Forget clothes, forget school, forget sanitation, forget having even some kind of roof on the head and blanket to sleep.)
Besides I am not sure bringing nationalism into charity is classy or even logical - given Bill Gates is spending his own money as opposed to tax payer one or national funds.
That is true. However, Gates' point is that there are health problems faced by poor folk, even in America, that no one there seems to be solving (not a pressing problem, not enough $, etc).
India is in a unique position to solve these issues, and hopefully some of those solutions can be applied to other places in the world, including America.
He's given $60 million to the the College-Ready Promise coalition in Los Angeles that serves thousands of inner-city kids and has given $1.37B to the United Negro College Fund.
If there's a chance to help more lives elsewhere I think he should do it. Why should he limit himself to America? I don't really understand what you're trying to get at with this comment.
I just want to point out that there are very poor, desperately poor people in America, and that perhaps his statement "But we don’t have everyday experience with the problems of the poorest. We don’t see people living in extreme poverty next door or pass by them in a slum down the street. " might lead some to think otherwise.
Yes, there are worse places, and while I've never traveled to Mumbai, I do know people who live there, and there are plenty of people with money there, and it's not all slums.
There are rich everywhere, and there are poor everywhere. The reasons for poverty are diverse. It's not: America is rich and India is poor as he seems to show.
Chris, I've lived all around the world - I literally have not seen worse poverty than Indian slums (and yes, this includes multiple countries in Africa). From a marginal benefit perspective, the gains in India are enormous.
Ok, so what can he do? I mean, let's say he spends 10 billion dollars, on 100 million people. That would be $100 each. I don't suppose there is any way to insure that all these people get their $100, because of the problem of distribution, identity verification, etc. You can't mail them a check. You can't mail them cash. You can't trust local delivery men to do the job (they'll pocket it and say they delivered, or they'll get robbed).
If you try to provide a service, you'll get knocked down by the bureaucracy. Look at the fiasco around providing identification cards for the poor (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Identification_Authorit...).
In my opinion, the best way to help the poor in India is to help India become a more prosperous nation, and as such, help the development of education, industry, public safety, environmental safety, research and development, and cultural identity within diversity. This is something the governments of India (national, state, and local) have generally pursued vigorously since independence more than 60 years ago. That the problem with poverty and illiteracy is still so pronounced only demonstrates the magnitude of the task.
Look what a long letter I write... I would suggest that the only way to help the people of the slums is for the rest of the people of India to want to help the people of the slums. There has to be a mindset that the majority of people in India adhere to, namely, that poverty is not acceptable, and that the factors that enhance poverty are to be remedied, even if this means pushing aside long-held traditions and ways of doing things.
Which is a tall order, even for Bill Gates.
So instead he goes after specific problems, such as polio, and it's all good, don't take me wrong, but, huh, it's not nearly as impressive in the grand scheme of things as it's made out to be.
I think this is an absurd standard. For want of perfection, he should do nothing? What he's doing has shown clear impact. I'm a skeptic on much of NGO land, but the Gates foundation is better than most and has hard gains to show for it.
Gates is working in India on education, on environmental safety, on sanitation (seriously - I've heard talk repeatedly that his number one goal right now is a better toilet / sanitary mechanism) - these are things that will directly advantage India in the long run. As for the Indian government... well, the road to hell has been paved with good and not so good intentions - suffice to say that has not always been the goal.
FYI separate topic, but the UID is a success story by any standard (its the world's largest biometric database by some distance) - and enables a reduction in the wastage in the traditional channels you identified (aka, the politician cut).
Timing is everything. IMO, this is the perfect timing to start a mission such as the one Mr. Gates is. Why? Well having just been to India last year, my cousins were complaining about how India is filled with geniuses, yet very few who want to take risks (whether it be to help fix the poverty, the political system, or just start cool companies). A couple months after I got back from India (I live in the States), I was talking to my cousins and they were telling me how some cities in the south are really starting to embrace a tech culture and were trying to resemble that of Silicon Valley. And it's grown magnitudes since then; in fact, in recent months, there have been a lot of posts on HN about India's tech expansion.
So Mr. Gates says it well: "To make real progress on the problems of the poorest, you need at least two ingredients: a deep understanding of the problems, and the technical ability to solve them." He probably is going there to better understand some of the problems that exist, but I bet he also understands there are a lot more people there that can help solve these problems. He's a pretty smart guy, I trust he'll actually do good on his visit and it will be constructive to India and its people.