Interesting to know how Microsoft labs is innovating. Where can IT help those, who are in the most need. This is an area where its very easy to go wrong. Its very easy to say that we have the software which will help them. Its easy to fool yourselves that this thing will really count. Therefore all this would take time for the benefits to come out.
Kiosks are an ambitious goal. Interestingly Bill is talking about simplicity of systems and how dramatic changes are happening in coming down the learning curve.

Many of these ideas don’t work, but we need to look at what we can do.

Work Of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
Is very much about the needy. 20% of the children who are born here, don’t get immunized and hence ehty die. They don’t get the right nutrition. I am particularly impressed with Bill’s amazing knowledge and the way he is present to the small things which are making a huge impact to the society at large.

Science is coming up with new vaccines. We have also got the govt to look at more investment in health, education, infrastructure. Broadband, kiosk encouragement. India is taking its confidence and is very innovative. There is even a sense a competition, and Bill says that he thinks its very healthy.
Competition with India and China, we are looking at what they have done good and what we could learn from them. Interestingly, Bill has now touched the word startup and how universities are working along them.

Can we double the number of kids getting immunization?

Education is an area where we haven’t seen much advance,. 100 years ago you had a chalkboard and a teacher writing on it. How different is education today? May you could get notes on the net. But it hasn’t radically changed.
The Microsoft group is working some very innovative ideas and we are taking some of the best teachers globally and creating videos and providing them for free. So the students have the best lectures. By just having the study groups that are lot more interactive, and this is a big part that can be shared and the competition is making it better and better all the time.

Just think of the impact that this will have. Training a farmer on the rice seeds that can be planted. Im particularly impressed with Bills simple but amazingly high vision.

I think we can set very concrete and ambitious targets.

Its okay to be optimistic because , this is a period where we have more and more smart people. It is fantastic that this country has not pulled back the investment on education and technology and we are taking things to the next level.
I am optimistic as ever and next time im here we would see some bright innovations in making things faster than we can predict them.

And now we have Mr. Som Mittal taking the session into the Q&A mode.

Q. India will have the largest youth population in the world over 20 years, and we have to make sure of adequate infra and good teachers. How can tech help?

A. Bill: there are some of these wireless approaches that will get more economic overtime. Interenet cafes are a big resource that we can look at. We also need to keep in mind as the cell phone becomes more and more powerful, we can look at taking this device to a new level while still keeping it in a price range that is still attractive.
Quality teacher, that is a tough problem. It’s a personnel system and we need to be good about testing them in terms of their ability. We have got a crisis in the US. The country has done well partly becoz we educate the best students. Education was a thing that pushed US into such a strong position and now we need to renew that.
And this surely is not a easy problem. Keeping in mind how important education is, which in India is a much eager issue, I do think that in terms of measurements and training some technology would facilitate it, but it’s the system which thrives on quality.

Q. Does Bill gates want to completely shut of all the tech?

A. And the room laughs. I am not a 24/7 computer person. And I read a lot. I am not that big on text messaging and am impressed with young people who do it. I love e mail. Ideally a lot of great ideas when I go off right reading articles when I am completely isolated from everything, even emails.
All these tools of technology let us waste our time if we are not careful we have to be disciplined in using them and not get offtrack.
Overall I never feel overwhelmed with technology.

Q. Sangeeta from the audience: one of the more fascinating aspect is your ability to combine the knowledge of technology into healthcare and especially in India, I would like to know more about it?

A. Bill: a half of what the gates foundation does is more of healthcare related. Bill is talking about, Indian companies and how these are great participants in the network. In healthcare delivering through technology is very difficult. This requires reaching out to communities and creating an environment of trust and this is difficult.
Over last 5 years we have learnt a lot and have created a model that we can apply to the presnt challenges. Heavy business intelligence is surely one of the many practices which are coming out of the work. Some of the statistics are surely showing progress, including the work of keeping HIV in this country leveled, though small, but surely it is happening.

Q. Mr. Mittal is now posing a question about how technology is coming and if there is something going to come which would dramatically change that?

A. Bill: The dream of healthcare has always been to have the person with the expertise be in the same location where the patient is. For a lot of things, the idea pf connecting the cell phone being used for a simple thing like blood test and al lthe data is sent in somewhere where it could be worked upon. The cell phone can also be turned into a microscope….i am amazed at the things Bill are talking about.
What we need is a combination of drugs and vaccines which are critical. By having these virtual systems with which we can turn and reach to patients. In US we have developed a model and how to manage and develop these systems.

Q. I am overwhelmed with the coverage given to the topic of healthcare. Chairman batra hospital with his two questions:

1. in a country like this, where I have the privilege of participating in the national decision making, I have the problem of having access to patient records at the point.
2. how does technology bring in a change in attitude where observing and putting information in the reocrsds and how clinical research could be worked upon through IT?

A. Bill: I think the first application that the ID system might have is getting the immunization up. The idea of just carrying your cellphone and get to know who is missing the immunization in this area and surely it does require a lot to be done for this. But I think it could be piloted in a large area within three years. It seems reasonable enough to me. Those workers are very open minded. There are also lots of privacy issues, which would need to be tackled as well. And privacy laws in the US says we don’t want medical records.

So in the more complex systems the task would be difficult, but things could be thought through very carefully.

Q. President Obamas’ Bangalore to buffalo? In a global world can artificial barriers be created?

A. Bill: well, im sure Indian politician can rather create jobs in Bangalore than buffalo. Fortunately job market is not a zero sum market. The total number of jobs will grow. If we were sitting in 1800 we will not have been able to say that there would be lawyers and other professions. But we do know that as innovation goes full speed, then jobs get created as the society gets rich, even though we cannot predict in advance.

If a country does not let smart people let into its region with immigration laws, its damaging to that country. In the long run the smart people that we took from the IIT’s a couple of years back, we got bad press in the US and in India.

The US congress is very tough in immigration, but I think there should be differences for smart people. The Canadian govt has a policy that a person with MS with hundred thousand a year, they want the person.
Who knows that the things may change and I cannot predict it. Microsoft is very vocal that it would be a huge mistake. In case of India the country is not restricting the cross movement of smart people.

Q. You did mention about the UID project, that we just launched. What will be your advice to Nandan.

A. Bill: I am seeing him tonight. And I’ll be fascinated to know what he is looking at. MS will be surely interested in associating to the project. We need to make sure the technology is used in the perfect way in this project. There are ways to do inexpensive cards, the digital chip technology is one method.
There are though pluses and minuses of these things though and MS labs is working on some innovative projects in the direction. In the US the computers might know a lot about you.
The banking and the healthcare should be two applications should be at the top of the list that we would like to see.

Q. Mr, Munjal from the auto industry? I would like to address the issue of distribution to the needy, the govt does a lot but we all know that most of it does not get to the user. So in India how are you facing this issue?

A. Bill: We are not just in India. But we are also in Africa, and there what really lacks is the roads and it’s a disaster. The green revolution could not have had a broad impact it had if it had not been for the roads. The basic infra investments, you just cannot get away from that. There is nothing like in the magic world of IT that will make the physical things go away, but food, cars, will always be the physical things which are the most efficient things to reach out.
There would be innovative models that would be followed in India. Today the inefficiencies in the distribution is fairly high in India.

Medicine is easier than Money

It’s a very tricky issue to get involved in looking that the money gets to the people who need it and not to the already based. It’s a tough problem. The govt here has to act in various ways of reporting back information.
I think cell phones are a great way to know that the service was not delivered to the right people. We can create a database that somehow people would start believing that there would be a strong follow up and it would not be as easy executing the same and not many have thought of this yet.

Sachin Pilot: the real trouble lasts in the last mile distribution. If you have things digitized where you need to have social audits and you would have things transparent. You would have to create ways like federal govts, state govt, panchayats.

Leakages are there, but we need to keep innovating and have more transparencies.

Q. Social Networking? You see it moving where for business?

A. Bill: SN is kind of a buzz word to be honest. Electronic communication has had many versions and now we have got in the framework of who are my friends, this is highly assymetric. Those relations but are not really flexible. There are 10,00 friends at facebook and I let it go.
We are working with facebook and now Bill mentions twitter. This stuff continues to evolve. An equivalent is taking place in the business world where you can be connected with you team. There is some sort of crossover happening. Your community and company are somewhat separate. You may have a fairly different persona at your workplace than what you are.
Its not such a big boundary connecting it with the cell phone. I think there are lots of innovations happening in the space.

Q. The mobile in India, how can you simplify the message to adopt of a Rs. 5 polio vaccine than a 10 cent ringtone?

A. Bill: People probably know that it looked almost different 3 years back, but now we are almost eradicating polio in India. If mothers know they are protecting their child from paralysis and we really spread the word and generate the general demand.
We generally educate people and how we reach out to communicate that with all the clutter of the promotional campaign. It’s a challenge. What I see is young people doing a lot of these things both in India and in the US. And I feel we need more people like this, and there is massive room for innovation, in making sure these issues get the right promotion they deserve.

Q. Would be great to hear your views on bringing everybody together sharing the common goals to make something big happen?

A. Bill: I think that there is a lot of cases gathering people with similar skill sets is not difficult. When you mentioned energy, it’s an area im putting a lot of time recently. Getting cheap energy is highly crucial. We need low cost energy. We want energy that costs a quarter that it costs today and it has no bad effects on environment.
I met GE CEO last week, talking about the same. I am also backing a lot of startups working on these ideas into energy. There are lots of innovative guys who are working on these solutions and some which I am backing.
All we need is need 3-4 of them to create big breakthroughs and fortunately we have a lot of talent in India, US, China and we need to get the govt in dialogue in promoting these innovations. Only innovation is gonna let you have create such possibilities.

The more time I spend on these innovations, the more optimistic I get.

Q. Pradeep from Cybermedia….factors making Bill move from foundations to MS?

A. Bill: NO. I love the work happening and I spend some of my time in this great stuff. But the idea of health is still in the earlier stage. How do you take successes and built structures around them.
This is a field that’s more or like computing in the 1970’s. its not a case where the framing of a entrepreneur is not as necessary than healthcare and reaching out to the people who need it the most. And I am loving my work with no second thoughts. That was my attitude when I was at MS and now I am fanatical full time about the foundation.
MS needs to take their own decisions now.

Q. What is the future of search?

A. Bill: its Bin. Search is not the ultimate today. The 10 links are not what people want. Even though its cool, search should still be dramatically better and its great that MS has signed up higher grade people and do innovative work.

Q. 30 years back did you see yourself doing the same work that you are doing today? What was your inner voice? What motivated you to get this off?

A. Bill: Great question. There are several things that put me on the path.

1. If you see the circumstances that people live in are so disparate. My view is if you give these things to your kids, its bad for the society and not just for your kids.
2. A big influence on me were my parents who exposed me to some amazing things.
3. Warren buffet cemented me on such things. And due to him we have double the resources that we had otherwise. And thankfully while I was at MS we had a team of dedicated 600 people who were working smart. I am having a lot of fun doing it.

I hope that there is something here that wil l have an impact whether on the rich people in the US or rich people here.