It is good for those with income surplus to their needs to help the less fortunate but, Mr Gates, please re-examine your funding strategy.
You could promote intensive organic agriculture like Kapilbhai
It is reported that in your Annual Letter you write about the plight of over 1 billion people who live in extreme poverty: “On most days, they worry about whether their family will have enough food to eat. There is irony in this, since most of them live and work on farms. The problem is that their farms, which tend to be just a couple of acres in size, don’t produce enough food for a family to live on.”
That is true, if the hapless farmers have been persuaded to acquire debt in order to buy hybrid seeds synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and buy multinational rather than locally or self-produced items. They cannot afford to satisfy the desires created by corporate advertising, which induce the poor to buy coloured, sweet-smelling soap, instead of the less glamorous product made in rural communities at very little cost.
Your Foundation invests in agribusiness, which uses agrochemicals proven to damage the health of workers and pollute ground water; UN reports and the research of Professor Jules Pretty indicate that intensive organic methods steadily raise small-holding yields.
India produces more than enough food for its people.
It needs more storage capacity – rural and urban godowns.
You could invest in basic medical care for a large number of people, rather than specific intervention for the relative few
The Foundation invests in nuclear reactors and in health projects which are said to be attracting personnel and resources away from more basic medical care – a “brain drain”, pulling away trained staff from children and those suffering from ‘common killers’. It has been reported that the focus on a few diseases has overlooked basic needs such as nutrition and transportation . . .
If an individual is suffering from starvation it may be impossible to stomach the medication meant to help them. It is alleged that many AIDS patients have so little food they vomit their free AIDS pills. For lack of the bus fare, others cannot get to clinics that offer lifesaving treatment.
The poor cannot afford corporate medicine, which often has side-effects more serious than the ailment treated, unlike traditional herbal medicine.
Mosquitos bite wherever people gather, not simply when they are in bed. So insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets make a minute – and controversial contribution. Public health with regard to malaria and other conditions would be well served by clearing areas of stagnant water and garbage in which mosquitos breed.
Help to promote adequate nourishment which enables people to resist and survive
Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is heavily funded by the industry and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Companies such as Britannia are bidding to get into the mid-day meal scheme and other nutrition-related programmes of the government.They claim that biscuits and cookies fortified with iron and other nutrients are the only option to tackle malnutrition and hunger.
This corporate chemical ‘fix’ is no substitute for the healthy traditional Indian diet which varies from state to state but includes roti, rice, pulses, vegetables and fruit.
Investment
Finally critics allege that the foundation prefers to make grants which benefit multinational agribusiness, companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that don’t make products needed by the developing world and the foundation continues to invest for maximum financial return in some companies which adversely affect the poor and vulnerable.
Time for change?
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POSTSCRIPT on geoengineering
From a reader who caused the writer to find a source:
“A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change . . .
“Solar geoengineering techniques are highly controversial: while some climate scientists believe they may prove a quick and relatively cheap way to slow global warming, others fear that when conducted in the upper atmosphere, they could irrevocably alter rainfall patterns and interfere with the earth’s climate.”
Mr Gates, please observe the precautionary principle.
