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I have been visiting India since the 1990s and am planning to visit again this week. Over the years, I learned about its rich history and visited some of its great monuments, such as the Taj Mahal.
But these are not the first things that come to mind when you think of India’s most important contributions to the world. India’s greatest gift is its ability to innovate.
This country has a long history of significant progress. (An ancient Indian mathematician is widely believed to have introduced his decimal system for numbers.) More recently, India has made advances that have saved and improved millions of lives in India and around the world. doing. The Gates Foundation is a partner in some of these efforts, and I will be visiting this week to ensure that Indian ideas and inventions are available to all who need them, no matter where they live. To learn how we can continue to work with India to reach people. This will be a major topic of discussion when he meets with Prime Minister Modi this week.
Health is one area where India is making a big difference. The country is the world’s largest vaccine producer, supplying more than 60% of all vaccines distributed by the Gavi organization, which has helped immunize more than a billion children in low-income countries. Indian companies are pioneering the development of high-quality, low-cost vaccines and medicines, offering affordable treatments for diseases such as HIV/AIDS and vaccines for rotavirus, pneumococcal pneumonia and COVID-19. We led the world by doing so. Governments have helped provide large quantities of vaccines to their own citizens and other low- and middle-income countries, and now they are trying to do the same with medical equipment and diagnostics.
Thanks in large part to India, developing countries now have access to new drugs and vaccines much faster than before. I rank these efforts as some of the most important health achievements of all time. (We’ve made progress, but we’re not done yet. The world needs to do more to close the gap between when drugs and vaccines are available in rich countries and when they reach low-income countries.) need to do it.)
Another area where I admire India’s innovative spirit is what is known as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). In other words, DPI refers to digital platforms and tools that help provide a variety of services. India’s biometric ID program ‘Aadhaar’ covers over 1.4 billion people and allows them to avail all kinds of government services without the need for photo identification. UPI is a digital payment system that ensures the identity of the person making the transaction and processes more than 12 billion transactions every month.
During your travels, you will see the Indian DPI in action. I am planning to visit the Agricultural Monitoring Center in Odisha. There, government officials use her DPI to provide real-time guidance to farmers. Thanks to Aadhaar, the Center is able to maintain a register of his 7.5 million farmers (even those who do not own land) and their crops, allowing authorities to keep track of who is growing what (i.e. agricultural advice received). they need). We have also developed a chatbot that makes it easy for farmers to get up-to-date information about their crops. Use AI to tailor your content to farmers’ specific needs in their local language.
The service’s pest management program currently reaches more than 4 million farmers, and since its launch in 2018, participating farmers have reduced the amount of crop lost to pests each year by 90%. Now, other states such as other Indian states, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and the World Bank are also trying to learn from Odisha’s experience with this service and biometric ID and digital payment systems.
I also look forward to learning more about how India is tackling urban poverty, especially among women. One of the world’s fastest growing cities, more than 100 million people live in slums, where they have limited access to even basic services such as healthcare, education and clean water. is difficult and often impossible. Women are particularly vulnerable as they face discrimination and violence.
This week I will be visiting low-income communities in Orissa. There, government programs help women develop skills to fulfill government construction contracts. Since 2018, the program has helped her 22,000 women’s groups implement more than 52,000 of her projects, including building roads, drainage ditches and toilets.
This program could serve as a model for other countries facing similar challenges. The participating women are partners in creating the project. They receive training in engineering, accounting, contract negotiation, and other skills and are involved in project planning, budgeting, construction, and maintenance. Whatever they build. I look forward to meeting some of the women in this program and hearing about the challenges they face and their successes.
India’s innovation capacity will also become increasingly important in halting climate change. Indians are already feeling the effects of rising temperatures and unpredictable weather, and eliminating the greenhouse gases that are causing the problem is a major scientific challenge. So it’s great that India is strengthening its capacity to invent, manufacture and deploy climate change breakthroughs. The government is investing in research to improve crop and livestock productivity in warmer climates and expanding clean energy programs.
These are just some of the ways Indian innovation is changing the world. I could list many more, but I’m sure you’ll learn a few new things during your visit. I look forward to speaking with government leaders, CEOs, and students who are driving innovation in India. This country has a lot to offer and I am optimistic that it will continue to lead the way in building a more just world.
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