Microsoft’s Bill Gates in Bhubaneswar, Visits Maa Mangala Basti

Bhubaneswar: Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates reached Bhubaneswar on a visit to Odisha on Tuesday.

After arriving in the capital of Odisha, he visited the Maa Mangala Basti slum in the Niladri Bihar area of the city. In the slum, he interacted with the locals about the implementation of various schemes of the Odisha Government such as MUKTA and JAGA Mission.

Gates will visit the Krushi Bhawan in Bhubaneswar and will meet Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

In 2017, the Odisha Government signed an MoU with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to bring in increased use of data management in the agriculture sector to improve the lives of small farmers and promote inclusive growth in the sector.

“During my trip I’ll get to see India’s DPI in action. I’ll visit an agricultural monitoring centre in the state of Odisha where government officials use DPI to give farmers real-time guidance. Thanks to Aadhaar, this centre is able to maintain a registry of 7.5 million farmers—even if they don’t own land—and their crops, so officials can keep track of who is growing what (and, therefore, what kind of farming advice they need). It has also developed a chatbot that makes it easy for farmers to get the latest information about their crops, using AI to tailor content to their particular needs and in their local language,” Gates wrote in his blog.