Financial inclusion, social impact on Gates’s agenda

MUMBAI: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Tuesday met Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das and discussed various issues including financial inclusion, payment systems, microfinance and digital lending among others. “Mr.@BillGates visited RBI Mumbai today and held wide ranging discussions with Governor @DasShaktikanta #RBI #rbitoday #rbigovernor #shaktikantadas #BillGates,” RBI said in a tweet.

Gates Foundation pursues a lot of activity in India including promotion of financial inclusion, health sector and climate change.

Billionaire businessman Gates is also engaged in large-scale philanthropy activities.

“Had an excellent meeting with @BillGates on financial inclusion, payment systems, microfinance and digital lending, etc,” Das said in another tweet.

In a recent article, Gates said, climate change and global health are inextricably linked.

“Hotter temperatures will make poverty reduction harder by increasing food insecurity and the prevalence of infectious diseases and diverting resources away from those who need them the most. It’s a vicious cycle,” he had said.

“The poorer a community is, the more vulnerable it is to climate change. And the more impacted a community is by extreme weather events, the more entrenched in poverty it becomes. To break the cycle, we need to make progress on both problems at the same time,” he had said. Meanwhile, Anand Mahindra, 67, also met Gates and shared photos from the meet. He said they spoke about collaborating to “multiply social impact”.

Gates also signed his book for Mahindra, who was delighted to get a free copy, he said.

In the book, Gates wrote: “To Anand, best wishes to my classmate! Bill Gates”.

The Mahindra Group Chairman wrote on Twitter: “Good to see Bill Gates again. And, refreshingly, the entire conversation between our teams was not about IT or any business but about how we could work together to multiply social impact. (Though there was some profit involved for me; I got a free, autographed copy of his book).”

Twitter users were surprised to know that they were classmates with one user commenting: “You guys were classmates?!” to which another replied: “At Harvard, yes”.