Mayawati meets Mrs Gates
By Techgirl

Not many people know that it was Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates late mother who nudged him to help the poor and weak.  Later, Bill’s wife would gently turn his attention to charitable and social causes.  There are few billionaires whose homes have such strong and positive female role models. 

Uttar Pradesh (UP) Chief Minister Mayawati is one of the most powerful politicians in India with a reputation of bull dozing anyone who stands in her way.  Like many absolute rulers, she has a healthy ego and has spent thousands of crores building statues of herself.  What Mayawati wants in UP, she gets it.  No one dare stand in her way.

Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has assets worth $34 Billion and gives away billions of dollars to science and social causes every year. In March, 2010, Melinda Gates was in India to donate $55 Million to help poor children of Uttar Pradesh. As part of this visit to UP, the elegant and soft hearted Melinda Gates had to meet the simply dressed but cold hearted Mayawati, and in an interview to the Hindu newspaper, she said her meeting with the powerful politician went well.

“
Mayawati wanted to talk all about development issues. So she really came in talking about them. She knows what's going on in her State. She knows we're committed to working there. She wanted to talk about what our focus is, so we talked about that; and what our investments would be. Mayawati talked about polio with her because it's still in 66 blocks in U.P. The two places where polio still exists in India are U.P. and Bihar. If we can get it done there and show the momentum from India that this can be eradicated, it's really, really key for the world. We talked about what I was seeing in immunisation. And then we talked about these maternal and child issues, and just development overall in her State.
“

Even slightly cynical journalists like me are in awe of great women like Melinda who have sacrificed all the comforts of a Billionaire’s existence to travel to small villages in Africa and Asia to be with the poor and needy.

There is much anger among Indians for the thousand of crores spent by the UP Government building statues of Mayawati and her Dalit icons like Kanshi Ram.  What if Mayawati decides to thank Bill and Melinda for their large hearted generosity by making a few statues of the Gates couple in Uttar Pradesh? Mayawati has directed that some of her marble status have her holding her large handbag.  In keeping with such tacky taste, she may ask that Bill’s marble statue be constructed with him holding a copy of the new Windows 7 operating system. Me thinks that even the open source movement will not begrudge a marble statue of Bill and Melinda in UP based tech hub of Noida.

Techgoss note: Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com