Bill Gates may open philanthropic floodgates to India

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Bill may open philanthropic floodgates to India

Chidanand Rajghatta

[Friday, June 16, 2006 12:00:35 pm TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

WASHINGTON: Microsofties might be mourning the impending exit of

Bill Gates despite his famed in-house tirades, but India will have

reason to look forward to his philanthropic concern over health

issues, much of it focusing on poor and developing countries.

Since it was founded in the 2000, the Melinda and Bill Gates

Foundation has committed nearly $ 300 million from its $ 30 billion

corpus in the fight against AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other

diseases in India.

For AIDS alone, the Foundation allotted $ 200 million in 2003, more

than the $ 146 million budgeted by the government at that time.

Gates' concern about India's health goes back to his deep regard for

the country's human resource and its contribution to Microsoft's

development.

In an October 2002 interview with this correspondent, when asked why

he had chosen to focus on India, Gates had this to say:

" India has contributed an amazing amount to software industry as a

whole and to Microsoft in particular. A high percent of our great

people come from India, a lot of our key partners are based in

India. So there is a desire to give back because of that. "

Another reason Gates said he is focused on India is that it had both

advanced medical science capabilities of the developed world and

medical problems of the developing world, and it provided

opportunity to study the diseases and develop cures.

" So we want to make what we are doing in Aids prevention (in India)

a model for the world and encourage both the science work and

prevention activity, " he said.

He said he had discussed philanthropic issues with Infosys' Narayana

Murthy and Wipro's Azim Premji and he was impressed with their work

and the fact that their spouses were involved too.

" I enjoy talking to them about these things and they will be a good

model for others (in India) " Gates said, suggesting an increasing

familiarity with India.

Although a phony Internet legend says some 32 per cent of Microsoft

staffers are Indians, Gates estimated that it was more in the region

of 20 per cent in just the engineering departments.

But he was full of praise for them, saying " our employees from India

are making stronger and stronger contributions, it's quite amazing, "

and joking that they had even started a cricket team in the Redmond

campus.

Among the first Indians to work for Microsoft when it was still a

newbie company was Remala Rao, who joined as its 39th employee and

worked on Windows 1.0 which was released in 1985.

By 2001, Microsoft had half dozen Indian vice-presidents and scores

of top executives performing crucial functions in both engineering

and marketing Windows, Excel, Powerpoint and other MS products.

However, none of them made it to the very top, and some of them

withered under Bill's famed tirades.

Some accounts describe him a shouting at employees remarks such

as " That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! " and " Why don't you

just join the Peace Corps? "

When engineers brought technical hurdles they had been unable to

crack, he is said to have quipped, " Do you want me to do it over the

weekend? "

But he also has an impish sense of humor. Once while writing about

spam in the Wall Street Journal (he gets 400,000 e-mails a day, most

of it junk) he said most of them offered to help him " get out of

debt or get rich quick, " both hilarious propositions given his

wealth.

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