Why I’m Going to India
thegatesnotes.com
thegatesnotes.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
- apathy from upper/middle class towards lower classes
- willingness from normal citizens to live with human feces on the streets, eat in restaurants with huge garbage piles right in front
- spinelessness/cowardness from the voting public
so what if there are smart people in india? they are spineless/uncompassionate/unfeeling/unprideful.
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.
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.
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.
>>- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
[0]: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the...
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.
He is the son of a lawyer and a college drop out.
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.
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.
>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?
After actually living in India for some time - my impression has been the opposite - overzealous affirmative action
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.
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.
Interesting that you brought it up.
Ironically, it was India that was probably ahead of other civilizations way earlier than 1500s.
Then history happened.
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).
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.
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.
PS: I have nothing against that mentality. It's just that now I realized it I am more curious about it.
http://movies.ndtv.com/bollywood/aamir-khan-on-time-cover-as...
http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/aamir-khan...
http://www.hindustantimes.com/photos-news/Photos-Lifestyle/a...
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).
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.
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.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpdoRUMeshw
This is the first part, there are 2 more. It's an incredible journey that helps you understand better the problems they're facing.
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.
And I don't consider one worse than the other, each will be biased in a different way.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
Places without effective governments? Those are places where people do routinely die of hunger and treatable disease.
See eg. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/world/asia/08japan.html?pa...
I would be happy to be wrong and the situation might have improved very recently?
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.
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?
There's no reason why you can't support both hunger and arts charities.
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.
It's not just about the money. It's about applying it thoughtfully over a period of time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But what do I know...
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.
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).
I think he's doing good, true, better than nothing.
Just take a trip to Mumbai and visit the slums there.
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.