Bill Gates in India, Day 1: Getting Better All The Time | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates in India, Day 1: Getting Better All The Time

thegatesnotes.com

33 pointsmanishsp8 comments

Remember meeting Mr G in New Delhi while I was working for an organisation his foundation has so far provided more than $1.2Billion to.

Now I'm working on creating transparency with open data so that others can find out where these and $23Billion more went.

See the project at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/open-data-for-transparency...

India is the US + ~1 billion people. It would be great if great if most of the country could move into the middle class within a generation.

"Last year our foundation sponsored a “re-invent the toilet” fair where 14 universities submitted innovative answers to that problem."

The toilet designs provided in the link are interesting. It looks like nothing can actually replace water usage for sanitation completely.

Once you get above a certain population density (and India is way beyond that), you have to apply significant technology to the problem. Example: London in the 1840's, where there were repeated cholera epidemics. Their solution was to build over 100 miles of sewage line to move it closer to the ocean. That's not an option in much of India (the Ganges and other major rivers are already toxic with human waste), so they'll have to spend hundreds of millions of rupees on advanced treatment & reclamation systems.

Here's what I don't get: India has about one hundred nuclear weapons. Yet they can't invest in a sensible sanitation infrastructure?

I know at some level this is nonsensical. The question really is more about whether this is a problem of priorities rather than capability or finances.

The average income in India is reported at somewhere around USD $100 per month. How many people and resources do you need to construct the required infrastructure? How much would it cost?

I don't know the cost of a typical nuclear weapon and the required support infrastructure. It can't be cheap. A billion dollars would put a million people to work for ten months. Is it a matter of misplaced priorities?

India lives in a hostile neighborhood. And those programs also employ thousands of engineers and scientists. I know it is tough to reconcile, but progress has to happen all fronts simultaneously. Like USA couldn't wait to go to the moon in 1969 even though they had millions of poor.

And in what universe do nuclear weapons fix the neighborhood?

"Interesting game. The only way to win is not to play."

We don't live in a utopic world. Nuclear weapons did fix a lot of things. Like being free from constant bullying tactics. It also led to the greatest stretch of indigenous development of technology since India's independence. The economic blockage helped us stand on our feet with pride.

So yes, it was a positive development.

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