The Ledger, every show

“It is also the case that Kolkata has never produced again, somebody of the caliber of Satyajit Ray, or Ravidnath Tagore, or Swami Vivekanand, or Netaji Subhash Bose, or Sri Aurobindo, or Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, or any number of other names I can give yo…”

“They basically, these whole bunch of these Rockefeller, Ford, even some UN agencies were involved in this, and they basically imported with their funding ultrasound machines. And they basically said that, look, this is great. Why don't you allow parents to act…”

“So this idea of trying to put you know, levels of risk badges on AI is, in my view, a waste of time at hundred percent going to fail.”

“A large part of it was domestic policies of the state. There was a demonization of entrepreneurship, business, and risk taking. And not surprisingly through the seventies, eighties and nineties business systematically left Kolkata so much so that it is not a s…”

“My views on UPSC and the fact that I think that too many young people are spending too much of energy trying to crack that one tiny exam you know, you can agree, you can disagree, but I think it's a good thing that there is a national debate on something that …”

“In the end, I'm trying to rebuild a civilization. I'm not building just an economy. The economy is a part of it, but the overall purpose is rebuilding the civilization. So building a highway and rebuilding the Ayodhya temple are a part of the same agenda, and …”

“Some part of it was of course, electoral malpractice booth capturing was converted into a art form, but I would argue that even more important than that was a poverty of aspiration.”

“Then at some point in time, their aspiration shrank to which gender they wanted to have. And so I can assure you that the politics you are now seeing in in America is a direct reflection of the poverty of their aspirations.”

“If you, if your you know, great economists are basically glorifying poverty, then don't complain that you get poverty, but because in each one of these things, an economy arises out of it, you know, so you will get an, you know an entire povertarian system wil…”

“One of these billionaire foundations will go and fund these studies. Then those studies will show either nutrition, vitamin D deficiency, whatever, whatever it is, the latest thing that you want to sell to India. And then it will be, then next stage will be, i…”

“After all, all the NGOs that scream so much about this billionaire problem, all of them are actually funded by Western billionaires. Ah, Soros's Open Society, ah, Omidyar, Ford, Rockefeller, who are all billionaires? The problem is not with Gora billionaires. …”

“But I think lakhs of people spending their best years trying to crack an exam where a tiny number of few thousand people actually going to get in makes no sense. The same, if they put the same energy into doing something else, you know, we would be winning mor…”

“Our professional bodies explicitly ban branding. So I cannot create a KPMG.”

“You see, there are so many Indians in this space moment. We open it up large numbers of Indians, both based in India and many based abroad. We'll start.”

“In financial systems we create, no, between subsidiaries, between group companies, we create all kinds of walls. We don't allow industries to own banks, for example. So we have to allow these kinds of walls. We have to create between different kinds of AI so t…”

“Our required fertility rate is 2.4. And we are already at 1.9 and falling.”

“No country in the world has once their fertility rate has fallen below replacement has been able to push it back up.”

“Let me say that the bulk of the reforms that I have done have been basically not because the industry bodies of that sector were pushing for those reforms, and that shouldn't be surprising because in most cases the industry body actually is reflects the incumb…”

“It does well in agriculture it's per capita income by 1907 early seventies is well above the national average, and then it stagnates. And this happens to such an extent that today Punjab's per capita income is just barely above the national average and its sha…”

“Odisha on the other hand, which was always the poor cousin, is now actually has a per capita income higher than a West Bengal.”

“Kolkata should have been that growth zone. Anchor of the East. So bringing back Kolkata is not just about, ah, reviving West Bengal. It is an anchor of the East, because when it gets going, it, it's just overwhelmingly bigger than Bhuvaneshwar or Ranchi or Goh…”

“There will be a time when certain Indian states will be too expensive to do certain kinds of activities. We should not get emotional about it. Hand those over to another state. There are poorer states in, in queue. Give it to them. You move up the value chain.”

“I think one of the problems of say a place like Bihar is not that it had bad leaders, that bad leaders are a reflection of what that society aspires for.”

“One of the things that will strike you, true of Indian academia to this day, that When you go through a certain argument, the argument is not ultimately won by virtue of the logic from first principles or from the evidence you bring. Ultimately, the argument i…”

“There are others who will find it threatening. Including members, by the way, of the Indian diaspora who had created this entire ecosystem based on essentially milking India's poverty for whatever projects and so on. There'll be members of the old elite of Ind…”

“Chief minister Jyoti Basu and the communists basically destroyed not just the economy of Kolkata and West Bengal, but, you know, the entire intellectual cultural sphere to a point that Kolkata has never recovered from that shock.”

“So you go and look at the big industrial houses of India in 1947, when we became independent. And with the one exception of Dambanis, it was the same people in 19 in the early nineties, because effectively once you had become big and you had the wherewithal of…”

“Ironically, the prime minister who then came to power was Manmohan Singh, the guy who had actually done the original set of reforms. But in his tenure, he didn't do very much. And so what happened, you got the momentum from the Vajpayee reforms, you got some y…”

“So there was a period from 2006 up to about 12, so five, six years, when in response to a slowing growth, the authorities of that time basically opened up the banks and basically said, you go and blindly lend everywhere. And so some part of that capacity creat…”

“First of all, I don't think we'll ever have a two billion population. As I said, we are not producing enough children already. To be able to sustain the current population. So while our population may go up a little bit long more because of longevity growth po…”

“We have become the office to the world, but it would not have been possible if we didn't remove this rather obscure OSP regulation, other service provider regulation, which I said, nobody knows about, but its removal was an absolute catalyst in creating, turni…”

“The good news is that AI development is there in some five countries in the world. So it conversation only needs to be had between these five countries.”

“So it now takes just 90 days. It's one of the fastest in the world, if not the fastest in the world. For shutting down a company.”

“You'll be amazed that the average district magistrate is the chairman of literally Dozens of institutions. Now, that person is going to be there for 18 months, if you're lucky for two years. Most DMs are there, I think, 18 months. So, most of these DMs have ne…”

“Everybody has the ability to insert a friction. Nobody has the right or obligation or duty to go in there and remove the friction.”

“Bihar's per capita income is only 33% of the national average. Ok, one third. It is no longer deteriorating in the last decade or so, it has stabilized, but at a very low level.”

“Nobody thinks of Sikkim, but in fact, Sikkim has the highest per capita of any state in the country. Well, not Forex yeah, but a little over three X”

“One percent or so of the world ships are built by us. Almost half are built by China. And if you include Japan and Korea, something like 90% or something like that of ships are built by just those three countries.”

“90% plus of our goods that are going in and out of the country are being done by foreign shipping lines, not by Indian ships.”

“So you see Bandra Kula complex. I would argue it's now, you know, that small little bit, but it's in within that it's Singapore level quality of offices and so on.”

“So there is no such thing as a vibrant cultural hub, which is not also an economic hub.”

“So there were these babies who, in the 24 hours before the survey was taken, had not been fed anything other than breast milk. Now, breast milk is food. In fact, we have a huge campaign in India to encourage mothers to breastfeed their kids. Okay, now supposin…”

“We are one sixth of the world's population. One sixth of the world's billionaires should live in India.”

“No, I think it'll happen faster than you think. After all, they quickly accepted Chinese and Japanese billionaires. They have no problem with Arab sheikhs. So they'll get used to Indian billionaires also.”

“The bulk of the cases that went wrong were just business failures, and do not confuse them.”

“In our case, that has not happened. Our banks are in rude health, you know, and that is even true of the you know, the non-banking system.”

“In one half to two years time, we will be doing a lakh patents a year.”

“In fact, India does no longer producing enough babies to replace itself. It may surprise people. Ah, yes. Our fertility rate is now just slightly below replacement.”