Chitralekha Zutshi on the paradoxes and contradictions that trailed the political life of one of the tallest leaders of the Kashmir Valley
n IThe Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire, Washington D.C.based investigative journalist Tim Schwab examines Bill Gates as a case study of how billionaire philanthropy can parlay extreme wealth into political influence sans accountability. In an email interview with The Hindu Sunday Magazine, Schwab talks about his new book, the dangers of unconstrained philanthropic power, and where India figures in Gates’s scheme of things. Edited excerpts:
Question:
How difficult was it to research and/or publish journalistic critiques of the Gates Foundation’s philanthropic work?
My reporting examines the Gates Foundation as an unregulated political organisation. I’m showing how Bill Gates meets with elected leaders around the world, shaping government priorities and spending on everything from public health to public education. This isn’t charity but rather undemocratic political influence. Most mainstream news outlets, by contrast, have tended to report on the good deeds of the Gates Foundation, profiling its big donations and ambitious goals. So, it has not been easy to get
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critical reporting on Gates published. But I do think it’s getting easier.
Q:
Today a person with no public health background is arguably the most influential voice in global public health. Is this a cause for alarm or a happy coincidence, given the millions of lives he’s reportedly saved?
If you try to track down the evidence surrounding the millions of lives Gates is saving, you end up finding research that the foundation itself funded. This research, which is not independent, is telling you one side of the story. It’s not telling us how many lives were lost because of Gates’s wrongheaded strategies. During the pandemic, for example, there were widespread calls, led by India and South Africa, to waive
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patents over COVID vaccines. Gates used his bully pulpit to challenge these calls, arguing that his foundation’s charitable partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry made a patent waiver unnecessary. But Gates’s charitable promise to deliver vaccine equity failed. What we saw instead was vaccine apartheid, as the poorest people on earth went to the back of the queue. Not surprisingly, there is no billionaire philanthropist funding research into how many lives were lost through Gates’s failed response effort.
It is true that Bill Gates has no formal training in most of the areas in which he works, whether it is pandemics or climate change or agriculture. His influence in world affairs only really makes sense if you believe that the richest guy deserves the loudest voice.
Q:
Where does India figure in Gates’s scheme of things?
India is the largest destination of Gates Foundation funding — outside of the U.S. and Europe. One feature
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The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire ₹799 that makes India so important to the foundation is its role as the socalled pharmacy of the world. Gates has sought out partnerships with Indian pharma to try to move lowcost drugs and vaccines into the poorest nations on earth. Much of Gates’s work in the pandemic, for example, hinged on a deal with the Serum Institute of India to produce vaccines for African nations. As a major wave of infections spread across India in early 2021, the government effectively issued an export ban, directing Serum’s shots into the arms of Indian citizens. That political decision was one reason Gates’s COVID response effort failed. But this episode also helps show how many of Gates’s philanthropic projects — globally — depend on Indian corridors of power, whether it is the private sector or the Modi administration.
Q:
How would you contextualise Gates’s decision to give the prestigious Global Goalkeeper Award to Prime Minister Modi in 2019?
Gates gave the humanitarian award at a time when Modi’s administration was in the midst of an international PR crisis, facing widespread reports of human rights abuses in Kashmir. Though the news media doesn’t often raise criticism around the foundation, many outlets did with this episode. So it was a big PR blunder for the foundation on the world stage, but I think it was also a political calculation by Gates. In all the work the foundation does
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he was in prison, and away from the scene. When two nations were being born in 1947, he was in prison. During the 1964 IndiaChina war, he was in prison, and when he came out, he held a meeting with the Chinese premier, triggering a huge controversy. Being in prison during crucial periods of history prevented him from seeing the big picture at times.
Q:
Would it be correct to say that Abdullah and Nehru had false expectations of each other visavis Kashmir?
Abdullah truly believed that Nehru would stand by him, but Nehru could only do so much. Discussions between both sides led to the Delhi Agreement of 1952, but both had different hopes
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around the globe, it has to work closely with governments. The foundation needs political allies because the work it is doing, essentially, is political in nature, trying to influence public policy at the highest levels. I think this helps explain Gates’s public displays of affection for Modi, which are becoming increasingly bizarre, like the fourhourlong promotional video last month.
Q:
Do you think Gates’s philanthropy ought to pivot away from ‘silver bullet’ approaches such as vaccines, and aim toward building public health infrastructure, especially in poorer countries?
The kind of work you’re describing — public health in poor nations — is, in my view, the job of the state. We should not allow billionaires to buy a seat at the democratic decisionmaking table, even if they present themselves as well meaning philanthropists. To me, the real debate is less about how to try to make the Gates Foundation kinder or gentler or less harmful, but rather how do we reorganise society and reimagine our economy so that we don’t allow people to become this grotesquely wealthy in the first place. My book focuses on Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, but it’s really a case study for the larger problem of extreme wealth and how it threatens democracy.
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Sheikh Abdullah: The Caged Lion of Kashmir ₹799
from it. For Nehru, the Delhi Agreement was something that was meant to bring Kashmir closer to India; Abdullah did not want that impression among his supporters.
Q:
In 1975, there was another agreement between Abdullah and Indira Gandhi. What happened in the interim?
Nehru kept insisting that Abdullah implement the Delhi Agreement in full, which the latter began to see as a compromise of autonomy. He dragged his feet on its implementation; he refused to meet Nehru and then he was dismissed in August, 1953. The promises he had made to the people remained unrealised and his own regime resorted to political repression, turning on any voice of opposition against his own regime but against India as well. He stifled any antiIndia voices. But his repeated incarceration by the Indian government helped him preserve his legitimacy among Kashmiri nationalists. The agreement between Indira Gandhi and Abdullah largely reiterated the Delhi Agreement and Article 370. There is nothing really new there, his image was tarnished forever in Kashmir with that.
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Do you think personal ambition got the better of him?
Besides, personal ambitions, his age and health were also factors. His family too put pressure on him to make compromises. Indira Gandhi was all powerful and Pakistan was defeated in the war. All these factors possibly influenced his decision.
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The national parties, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have always pushed for deeper integration, seen in the policies of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi...
Absolutely. What happened to Article 370 in 2019 was the culmination in some ways of Delhi’s relationship with Kashmir and the gradual dismantling of the State’s claims. It wasn’t something that came out of the blue. It was very much along the lines of what has been happening in Kashmir since 1947.
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Read the full interview at www.thehindu.co.in