It is not every day, that a government scheme gets high praise from one of the most influential people on this planet and when it’s about one of the most controversial yet revolutionary initiative in our country’s history it deserves to be highlighted.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, while addressing a meeting in Washington talked about how Aadhaar is a commendable effort made by the Indian government and praised its chief architect Nandan Nilekani, the Infosys founder. Gates added that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded a project for the World Bank which follows the lines of “Aadhaar” and asked the World Bank to find countries where it can be emulated.
“We have funded the World Bank to take this Aadhaar approach to other countries,” – Bill stated.
Gates talked about how this approach is helpful for better governance and ensures faster economic growth which in turn will help the country’s citizens to be empowered.
“Yes, countries should adopt that approach because the quality of governance has a lot to do with how quickly countries are able to grow their economy and empower their people,” he responded to a question.
He talked about the benefits of this approach being very high and negated claims about Adhaar being a privacy issue. He reiterated the core idea of Adhaar, which is to create a biometric id for better governance and transparency. India with the Adhaar scheme has been able to create world’s largest Biometric Id system.
“Aadhaar in itself doesn’t pose any privacy issue because it’s just a bio ID verification scheme,” – Bill Gates stated in response to a question about the concerns of privacy associated with Aadhar.
This is not the first time Bill Gates has praised Aadhar, while giving a lecture on “Technology and Transformation” organized by NITI Aayog on November 2016, he said that Aadhar or projects like Aadhar has never been done before even in the countries with much greater resources than India, Gates also praised Narendra Modi for embracing the idea of Aadhar.