Invest more in health, education of Indian kids: Bill Gates

New Delhi, Nov 17: Microsoft Founder Bill Gates has stressed that India should invest more in the sectors of Health, Sanitation and Skills, so as to nurture a stronger and better skilled workforce, which will help in maintaining a steady seven per cent growth in its GDP for at least a decade. Participating in a panel discussion on ‘Human Capital, Growth and Public Policy’, organised by the Observer Research Foundation, in association with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Thursday at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Auditorium here, Mr Gates said 'as India charts its course for the future, the productivity and skill level of its workforce is becoming even more critical'. He gave the example of China, where investments in fundamentals like health and nutrition accounted for almost 40 per cent of China's phenomenal growth since the 1970s. The co-Chairman of the BMGF pointed out that the models that developing economies had relied upon so far, like export-oriented, low-skill, large scale manufacturing jobs, were on the decline around the world, as automation was reducing the amount of low-skill work the manufacturing sector requires. Saying lost productivity was a lost potential in future, one of the richest persons in the world said the fact that malnourished Indian children perform two-to-three times worse than their adequately nourished peers, underlines the need for investing more and more in health, sanitation and skilling of Indian workers and their children.
Mr Gates said he was optimistic of the states' capability of achieving this goal, provided enough investment was done on these areas, he added. The Microsoft Founder also stressed on the importance of achieving 'equitable growth,' while trying to produce the miracle of over seven per cent GDP growth for over a decade. The other panelists included Principal Economic Advisor to the Government of India Sanjeev Sanyal and Strategy Consultant on Agriculture, Urban Development and Consumer brands Ireena Vittal. The discussion was moderated by Vice Chancellor of the Ashoka University Prof Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Mr Sanyal said while he was for much bigger allocations for sectors like health, education and sanitation, the problem for the government was that there were other sectors that required more finances. He hoped that tax reforms like GST would make the government economically much stronger, resulting in more finances for health and education. He also underlined the need for improving municipal services to improve the life of people. 'We need to work very hard on this,' he said. Saying in the next decade, India will witness the world's biggest urbanisation, Mr Sanyal revealed that the government would be bringing out a new urban policy early next year, which would be a comprehensive document, factoring in all aspects. Responding to his observations, Mr Gates described the GST as 'fantastic'. Explaining how different places in India experience floods and drought many times at the same time, Ms Vittal emphasised on the need for proper and effective management of water. She pointed out the importance of human capital, which was the basis for improvement of life. Delivering the opening remarks, Sunjoy Joshi, Chairman, ORF, said the discussion was part of a series of programmes ORF was curating with its partner the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the implementation of sustainable development goals in India.
'We live in a world that is obsessed by security – and the security it invests in so heavily is more and more defined in increasingly narrow terms. But the embarrassing truth is that completely avoidable mortality and morbidity; disease, malnutrition, pose the largest as well as uncounted and unaccounted for drain on human lives,' he said. The ORF Chairman said any discussion on human security, therefore, must include the important questions of health, nutrition, education and gender that remain the fundamental impediments to sustained growth. To do that, Human capital, as a fundamental building block of society, of community, must move to the core in any imagination of human security, he added. That also makes these parts of an economic agenda because maternal and early-life nutrition programmes offer every nation the highest possible returns on investment. Coming to India, 'in a country obsessed with double digit growth, these are clear double digit returns,' he said. 'For in a polity confined to policy making in a disaggregated sectors, we believe that health and nutrition is not a social sector agenda. It is a national security agenda. It is an economic agenda,' the ORF Chairman said.UNI