The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Friday signed an agreement with the Urban Development Ministry to promote sanitation services from January, 2016.
The memorandum of cooperation was inked in the presence of Gates, co-chairperson of the foundation and Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu here.
Later, Gates also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Health Minister J P Nadda.
The Microsoft founder asked Naidu to consider various approaches to sanitation and suggested that attention needs to be paid to fecal sludge management which gives better returns in terms of health impacts. Gates stressed on the need to set up decentralised sludge processing plants for processing of fecal matter.
He informed Naidu that individual toilets were built on a large scale in Africa but their usage is low and underscored the need to reach out to people with better toilet technologies.
His foundation supports a large number of research and social sectors programme all over the world including many in India.
Development of better toilet technologies is one of the research projects that Gates Foundation backs up.