At least once a year, bill and Melinda Gates like to take what they call a "learn-ing tour" of the places that civilization has largely for-gotten. On Dec. 6 in India, on the most recent of such visits, they left the five-star Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, to which they had flown on their private jet the night before, and took a 20-minute drive to a slum colony in an area called Meera Bagh. On the way there, through rickshaw traffic jams and past lumbering cows, a local doctor briefed them on the slum's 9,000 residents and five health-care workers. Melinda listened intently with her eyebrows raised, as she almost always does, while Bill interrupted to ask the kinds of questions you would expect from a capitalist billionaire. "Who owns the land?" (The doctor wasn't sure, but probably the government.) "How much do the health-care workers earn?" (Ten dollars a month.) "Is that a full-time job?" (No.)
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