All Lives Have Equal Value
Governance Today|March 2017

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in India focuses on key areas that will affect the future of India’s most vulnerable communities: reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health and nutrition; sanitation; agricultural development; and financial inclusion. Headed by Dr. Nachiket Mor in India, the foundation, in its decade long journey here, has been building momentum in developing scalable, measurable programmes across all priority areas. Dr. Nachiket, flitting between the financial and philanthropic worlds, has been closely associated with the core interest areas of the foundation, including healthcare alongside sanitation, agricultural development and financial services for the poor. In conversation with Rajesh Mehta, Consulting Editor, Governance Today, Dr Nachiket Mor, India Country Office Director talks about the foundation’s values, services and plans in India...

Rajesh Mehta
All Lives Have Equal Value

You had recently written an annual letter showcasing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s projects and its impact in India. Please let readers know more about the message.

The first edition of our annual India Letter marked a significant milestone for the Gates Foundation, the completion of 15 years of our work globally, with 13 years in India, and we felt that it provided a good opportunity for us, to reflect on our progress in reducing inequalities in health, and in access to safe sanitation and financial inclusion; and to better understand the good practices that should be scaled up as well as the challenges we continue to face as we work together to help achieve India’s development goals. The India Letter was centred on the primary question: “What if every Indian had the opportunity to lead a healthy, productive life?” This “What if” is a vital question that we often ask ourselves at the foundation; so that the search for answers can enable us to deploy our collective expertise and to develop solutions that can potentially help solve the world’s most intractable problems. In the letter we highlighted three sets of initiatives in which we have been involved, as examples of successful foundation interventions, jointly with the government and our partners, to leverage our combined capabilities to help India get better results from her investments in the social sector: in primary healthcare services for women and young children, tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment, and sanitation.

This story is from the March 2017 edition of Governance Today.

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This story is from the March 2017 edition of Governance Today.

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