Skip to main content

Time for "Nobel laureate" Bill Gates

A lot has been said about Steve Jobs. Indeed, he was a fighter and his success story is most inspiring. His biography ‘The journey is the reward’, written years ago, inspired me personally to try and achieve more. And since Steve Jobs was the creative wild and hippie underdog during the same era as Gates, perhaps he overshadowed Gates largely during our times. Yet, I have always maintained that Bill Gates is the man who is the real visionary. Far beyond any businessman the world has seen in our times. For who is a greater business icon? The man who makes billions and keeps them as reserves or the man who makes billions and then uses that money to change the world into a better place to live in?

Yes, that’s what differentiates Bill Gates from all his contemporaries. Greatly inspired by the Rockefeller family, Bill Gates, in the year 2000, by combining three of his and his wife’s charities, decided to do what no one could ever imagine. He decided to give away 95% of his wealth to charity. As of today, he has given away more than 28 billion dollars in charity. In 2010, he along with Warren Buffett, inspired even Mark Zuckerberg to pledge away half of his wealth over his lifetime by making him sign the “Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge”. Yet, what really differentiates Bill Gates’ charitable initiatives from others is his clear-cut focus on the real and biggest problem that the world faces. Yes, the problem of poverty. The problem that 85 top, rich people own wealth that’s more than the total wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion. The problem that while the rich are rich like never before and while science has advanced humongously and soon humans may even dream of living forever, there are millions dying of curable diseases in Africa and other parts of the world. There is nothing fashionable in the work of Bill Gates. He doesn’t believe in having fashionable fights and dinners for animal rights etcetera while human beings live like street dogs and die like them. His is a clear cut and sharp focus on humanity. To be more precise, a focuse on the genuinely poorest of poor and unhealthiest of unhealthy (thus, obviously, a large part of his work happens in Africa).

Read more
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don’t see “Slumdog Millionaire”. It sucks!

A phony poseur that has been made only to mock India for the viewing pleasure of the First World!! The emperor’s new clothes! That’s “Slumdog Millionaire” for you… Five minutes into this celebrated patchwork of illogical clichés and you are struck by the jarring dialogues. The cumbersome delivery in a language which doesn’t come naturally to most of the actors sounds like someone scratching on walls with one’s finger nails; it ruins the possibility of a connection… Had this film been made by an Indian director, it would’ve been trashed as a rotting old hat, which literally stands out only because of its stench, but since the man making it happens to be from the West, we’re all left celebrating the emperor’s new clothes. The film borrows an undoubtedly interesting narrative style – from films like “City of God” – but then uses it to weave in a collection of clichés from the Third World’s underbelly for the viewing pleasure of a First World audience. The real slumdog in the movie is not ...
347 comments
Read more

HATS OFF TO SHAH RUKH KHAN FOR STANDING HIS GROUND! IT’S NOW TIME TO END THIS HOOLIGANISM ONCE AND FOR ALL AND MAKE MUMBAI A UNION TERRITORY!

SRK is great! Not just because he is such a star, but because he genuinely is the most amazing person and has such a logical and sound brain. And now the entire nation idolizes this man all the more because he has become a symbol of sheer courage as well! And I think all it required was someone like him to stand up coolly and say, “This is not right, I’ve done nothing wrong and I won’t apologise.” When he was saying this, one could almost see the schoolboy rebel in him – not ready to cow down to an illogical man trying to act as the school headmaster. I am writing this editorial immediately after coming back from a show on NDTV 24x7, which was on the topic, “Is Sena the real power in Mumbai?” I was one of the speakers. It was sad to see Uddhav Thackeray, who was another speaker in that show, sticking to a stance that cannot be defended by any sense of logic. When questioned on the show by the NDTV anchor on his tendentious comments against SRK, Uddhav’s reply was that one should ask th...
124 comments
Read more

Chinese investments in Africa, a lesson for the world!

As London burns and USA is downgraded with fears of another recessionary wave hitting the world, there is one thing that becomes amply clear. You can’t have a world full of inequity and live in peace. Never before in its history has the gap between the rich and the poor widened as it has in the last 40 years in America. And every right wing party has only worked hard to enrich the rich. Every time the Democrats have come back and tried to increase even half a percent of tax on the rich to use it for those marginalized by the markets, the Republicans have screamed hoarse. No doubt, Obama has knowledge about economics, but what is happening in America right now is a shame, especially the way right wing fanatics are making the scene look worse than it is. The problem in UK is however another side of the same coin. The whites were sitting happily claiming that the blacks and other minorities live better in UK than they would have in their country of origin. However, happiness is a comparat...
100 comments
Read more