Bill and Melinda Gates in conversation with author Chetan Bhagat in the city on Thursday said they started the Gates Foundation because they believe that all lives have equal value.
Ms. Gates said that while many people know that this is true, they do not work pro-actively towards bridging that gap.
They both felt that nobody was putting money into research for finding a cure to many diseases as most of these were not the problems of the ‘rich world’. “Why should someone die of diarrhoea in some part of the world when in other parts it is easily curable,” she said.
Mr. Gates said he chose philanthropy because he wanted it to have a big impact, just like how Microsoft had when he founded it. About giving away his wealth instead of passing it on to his children, he said: “With a first generation fortune you have to take a decision to set a precedent that generations will follow. If you pass your money down, then for generations people will feel the need to pass that down instead of doing good work with it.”
Reacting to a question on if they were getting the government off-the-hook by doing so much work in rural India, they said that they could only be a catalyst to providing research and solutions but ultimately it was the government that needed to take up the initiative on a large scale.
They were optimistic about the new government’s health policy on sanitation, new-born health and the launch of four new vaccines. Mr. Gates, however, commented that the health budget needed a major increase and that they needed to do some unpopular stuff to meet their health goals.
What keeps them going? The couple said they have met people and come across so many stories in India that have moved them and they are often haunted by these stories. But, it is these stories that spur them on with the hope that they can do something better at the macro level that will solve individual problems.
Speaking about the difference between working in India and other places in the world, he said good roads in India make life very easy as in some places in Africa there are places which they cannot reach.
For her part, Ms. Gates said that when it comes to women and child development the social structure is very different in India because if one can convince the mother-in-law about family planning it becomes easier for women to follow it. She also hoped to come up with an innovative, discreet and inexpensive contraceptive that can be used by women so that the power to use it lies with them.
Mr. Gates, on the other hand, has been working on a project to invent a more pleasurable condom using a much thinner material. He felt that since the product will be used a lot in the United States that will make it cheaper to make it available in poor areas and help in family planning.
On a lighter note, Chetan Bhagat asked the couple to do a performance review of each other. Melinda felt that one of Bill’s biggest strengths was his curiosity to learn new things, and his weakness was that he was sometimes tough not only on himself but his team as well as he expects them to be thorough with their work just as he is. Bill felt Melinda was great with people dynamics but just wished that she would write longer office memos.
