Bill Gates meets RBI Governor Das, Anand Mahindra: Here's what they discussed

Bill Gates, who is visiting India for the first time since the pandemic, was at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) headquarters in Mumbai on Tuesday. In a meeting with Governor Shaktikanta Das, Gates discussed, among other topics, financial inclusion, payment systems, microfinance, and digital lending.

The Microsoft co-founder also called on the Mahindra group's Anand Mahindra. Gates and Mahindra were classmates at Harvard in 1973 before Gates famously dropped out to focus on building his company.

Gates engages in extensive philanthropic initiatives in India through his Gates Foundation, including the promotion of financial inclusion, the health sector, and climate change. The RBI in a Tweet announced that Gates had visited RBI Mumbai today and held wide-ranging discussions with Governor Das. "Had an excellent meeting with @BillGates on financial inclusion, payment systems, microfinance, and digital lending, etc," Das said in another tweet.

Gates in his latest blog ‘My Message in India: TO fight climate change, improve global health’ said India as a whole gives him hope for the future. India eradicated polio, lowered HIV transmission, reduced poverty, cut infant mortality, and increased access to sanitation and financial services.

“I’m headed back to India next week. Although I’ve spent a lot of time there over the years—doing everything from checking out toilets to visiting a village that’s home to the one poorest, most underserved caste in India—I haven’t been back since before the pandemic. I can’t wait to see how much progress has been made in that time,” he said in a message last week.

Gates also said that 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 67-year-old American business magnate, author, investor, and philanthropist added “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 also wrote in his post that like every other nation on earth, India has limited resources, but it has “shown us how the world may advance despite this limitation.

By partnering and attempting creative ways, the public, commercial, and philanthropic sectors are able to transform limited resources into large pools of cash and expertise that result in advancement. Bill Gates stated in his blog that he believes we can combat climate change and enhance global health if we work together,” he said.

Also taking to Twitter was the Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, who shared a picture with the philanthropist and said they spoke about collaborating to “multiply social impact.” Mr Mahindra also shared that Mr Gates signed his book for him, in which he wished his "classmate" the best. 

"Good to see @BillGates 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)" Mr Mahindra wrote in the caption. 

Bill Gates was a co-founder of Microsoft, the company that developed the popular Windows operating system (OS). He also established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund projects aimed at eradicating world hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. He is a philanthropist who, after retiring as Microsoft's CEO, devotes his time to helping the world overcome its challenges and effecting change.