Bill Gates In Bhubaneswar: To Meet CM Naveen Patnaik and Visit Krushi Bhawan

Bhubaneswar: Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates arrived in Odisha yesterday night. According to reports, Bill Gates is scheduled to meet Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He is also scheduled to visit a number of places in the capital. The co-founder of Microsoft will pay a visit to Maa Managala Basti in Niladri Vihar, Ward-14, to learn about the Mukta and Jaga Schemes of the state government and interact with community members. One of the focus areas of his visit will be understanding the use of artificial intelligence for farmers by Government of Odisha. He is also scheduled to visit the Krushi Bhawan in Bhubaneswar.

The Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation had associated itself with the Department of Agriculture & Farmer Empowerment, and the Fisheries and Animal Resource Department Government of Odisha in 2017 and collaborated for innovation in data-driven decision-making and increasing the farmers’ income.

Earlier, Bill Gates had written in his blog about his visit to Odisha and said “During my trip I’ll get to see India’s DPI in action. I’ll visit an agricultural monitoring center in the state of Odisha where government officials use DPI to give farmers real-time guidance. Thanks to Aadhaar, this center 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.”

“This week, I’ll visit a low-income community in Odisha where a government program is helping women get the skills to fulfill government construction contracts. Since 2018, this program has helped 22,000 groups of women deliver on more than 52,000 projects including building roads, drains, and toilets”, he wrote in his blog.