Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and is an eminent philanthropist, will be visiting Odisha on Wednesday. He is scheduled to meet with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, farmers, and successful entrepreneurs during his visit to the state. Preparation is in full swing to give Gates a red carpet welcome.
Gates also shared a video with the caption “The Indian Innovations I’m most excited to see.”
In his blog, Gates wrote: “I will visit an agricultural monitoring centre in the state of Odisha where government officials use DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) to give farmers real-time guidance. Thanks to Aadhaar, this centre is able to maintain a registry of 7.5 million farmers — even if they don’t own land — and their crops, so officials can keep track of who is growing what (and, therefore, what kind of farming advice they need). It has also developed a chatbot that makes it easy for farmers to get the latest information about their crops, using AI to tailor content to their particular needs and in their local language.”
Bill Gates further said: “This service’s pest management programme now reaches more than 4 million farmers, and since it began in 2018, the volume of crops that participating farmers lose to pests every year has dropped by 90 per cent.
“Now others — including other states in India as well as Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and the World Bank —are looking to learn from Odisha’s experience with this service as well as its biometric card and digital payment systems.”
Gates stated that he is visiting a community in Odisha where a government program is assisting women in acquiring skills to fulfill government construction contracts.
Besides meeting Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Mr Gates will attend other functions related to the ‘Jaga Mission’ (scheme for development of slums), the ‘Mukta’ scheme (localised employment opportunities for the urban poor) and ‘Mission Shakti’, officials said.
India has made significant strides towards enhancing economic growth, technological advancement, and social development. Watch the video to know why this inspires our co-chair, @BillGates, to visit the nation again.
Since 2017, the Odisha government’s Department of Agriculture & Farmer Empowerment and the Fisheries and Animal Resource Department have collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for innovation in data-driven decision-making, they said.
