A lesson from Bill Gates.

Times of India roped in Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, as guest editor for a series of articles about problems faced by India as a nation. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has been working in India for many years, concentrating on public health, sanitation and nutrition. Gates showed an amazing amount of knowledge about social problems in India, talking about Swachh Bharat programme, about disposal of waste and about malnutrition. Not that all his efforts have been successful. His foundation wasted $258 million on HIV/AIDS prevention program , maybe because its approach was American which was viewed with suspicion by the people it was trying to help. The Indian government took over the foundation's vaccination program apparently because it is associated GAVI, an alliance of WHO, UNESCO, various governments, and large pharmaceuticals, which is working to eradicate communicable diseases through vaccination. Gates is disappointed with the state of education in India. "Most trends are positive, but my biggest disappointment when it comes to India is the education system. It should be far better," he said. "The total spending on public health is too low. Every other country that moved to middle income status spends over 3% (of its GDP) on public health (the corresponding figure for India is about 1%)." Health and nutrition are vital for rapid economic growth because they enhance 'human capital', wrote Gates. "Human capital has always been important. For example, research shows that investments in fundamentals like health and nutrition account for almost 40% of China's growth since the 1970s." Of course, a large part of that improvement in China was due to its one child policy, since 1980. China prevented 400 million new births, which improved health of women, allowed women to join the workforce, prevented epidemics, improved childhood nutrition and protected the environment. Gates is careful not to mention that because it would be politically incorrect and precipitate a hysterical reaction. Our politicians love the vote bank which they can influence through reservation in education and jobs, and by increasing social schemes. Gates chose an article on filariasis, which incapacitates affected people, and the steps being taken to eradicate it. Prof Banerjee and Duflo who run a poverty action lab in MIT, in the US have devised an evidence based system to measure effectiveness of social programs. Their organisation, known as J-PAL, is working with central and state government departments to bring greater efficiency into social policies. The failure of the government forced Union Home Minister to ask Bill Gates to adopt 1,000 villages hit by Maoists. Should we ask Americans to run our government?