New Delhi:
Businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates in an exclusive interview to NDTV said India has a huge potential to expand technological capacities to save lives and improve standards of living.
Recalling his several meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Gates said his foundation works closely with the Indian government and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, whose work on developing and implementing the biometric identity number Aadhaar is well-known, to see whether some of the ideas that India has successfully deployed at scale can be made available to other countries.
Referring to India’s digital public infrastructure, Mr Gates said India’s projects such as Aadhaar are “very empowering set of tools”.
“The prime minister is trying to make sure India takes its incredible capacities and is really out at the forefront… In education and health, there’s so much more that can be done,” Mr Gates told NDTV.
The Gates Foundation works in collaboration with the Indian government and other partners on various issues, from healthcare and sanitation to gender equality, agricultural development, and financial empowerment of the most vulnerable populations.
Mr Gates gave the example of using technology to store patient information and share it seamlessly between health networks and doctors.
“… Whenever you have a shortage of great doctors, the idea that you can make doctors more productive or even give patient information in between their visits to doctors can improve lives immensely,” Mr Gates said.
The Microsoft co-founder said artificial intelligence in health and agriculture are key topics, which PM Modi is aware of.
“You have a lot of very impressive people who come from the computer industry, and so they can follow through on these things. India has also done deep research in agriculture amid challenging weather conditions… We have been able to take the government’s goals in the areas of health and agriculture to see how to accelerate them. Although AI has not been part of that historically, I would say a majority of our projects will have some element of AI going forward,” Mr Gates told NDTV.
