Microsoft co-founder and eminent philanthropist Bill Gates will visit Odisha on Wednesday. He is scheduled to meet chief minister Naveen Patnaik, farmers and successful entrepreneurs during his visit to the state. Preparation is in full swing to give a red carpet welcome to Gates.

Gates also shared a video with the caption “The Indian Innovations I’m most excited to see.”

In his blog, Gates wrote: “I will visit an agricultural monitoring centre in the state of Odisha where government officials use DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) to give farmers real-time guidance. Thanks to Aadhaar, this centre 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.”

Gates further said: “This service’s pest management programme now reaches more than 4 million farmers, and since it began in 2018, the volume of crops that participating farmers lose to pests every year has dropped by 90 per cent.

“Now others — including other states in India as well as Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and the World Bank —are looking to learn from Odisha’s experience with this service as well as its biometric card and digital payment systems.”

Gates also mentioned that he is visiting a low-income community in Odisha where a government programme is helping women acquire skills to fulfil government construction contracts.