Bill Gates on Modi’s Programmes: Building Toilets is loke Opening Bank Account, Challenge is to Getting to Use it
India.com 2017-11-17 09:51:10
New Delhi, Nov 17: Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates said that the biggest challenge for the Union government was not to build toilets for the masses, but to get them using them.
In a chat with TOI, he said building toilet was like opening saving bank accounts; the challenge is to getting people use them.
Talking about the partnership of his foundation with PM Modi's Swachh Bharat Mission, he said his organisation's role was to build toilets that are not so bad that one would not be able to use them.
He stressed on the need for a behavioral changes in the masses.
"Once a village passes the view that nobody should be doing this (open defecation), then it tends to stay. The nice thing is that if you intervene for just a few years then sometimes it becomes the expectation.
So that's behaviour change and a lot of donors are doing that now," he told TOI..
He said the other big challenge is to build toilets that takes care of the waste. He said in the next few years,
they would have to invent toilets that are clean and burns the waste then and there.
Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, but he devotes so much of his time in India. Knowing the country well, he said his biggest disappointment was the education system.
"Most trends are positive, but my biggest disappointment when it comes to India is the education system.
It should be far better. I don't want to be critical, but I do want to create higher expectations about it.
However, he himself is not to keen on getting into education.
"We can't do everything. Most of India's own philanthropists have picked education as a high priority and I'm very glad about that," he said.