The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 1,621 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Sanyal: No country has ever recovered from sub-replacement fertility rates
“No country in the world has once their fertility rate has fallen below replacement has been able to push it back up.”
Sanyal: India's fertility rate has fallen to 1.9, well below replacement
“Our required fertility rate is 2.4. And we are already at 1.9 and falling.”
Sanyal: Regulatory bodies ban corporate branding, preventing an Indian KPMG
“Our professional bodies explicitly ban branding. So I cannot create a KPMG.”
Rajeev: Kerala is the first state globally to make internet a basic right
“First time in the world, Kerala is a state which you have recognized internet right is a basic right of the citizen. Not only on paper, we are providing high-speed connectivity, K-Phone. It's a government-owned mechanism for laying optical fiber cable network,…”
Rajeev: Kerala's FDI grew 100% in a single year, rising to ninth
“If you're taking FTA, the growth rate of FTA in the state of Kerala is hundred percent within a year. And the position of Kerala is jumped to ninth.”
Bajaj: 90% of global semiconductor chip design goes through India
“If you look at semiconductors, 90%, I don't know if you know this statistic, 90% of chip design goes through India, including the Chinese trips.”
Sharma: Relying On Visa And Mastercard Means A 1% Foreign Tax
“The fact is that when your economy is reliant on Visa MasterCard, you're paying a one person tax to a third country, right?”
Sharma: Facebook Used Indian Policy To Defend US Net Neutrality
“And the same Facebook, which had insisted on removing net neutrality here was now defending net neutrality here using the three page policy that we had created to basically preserve our net neutrality.”
Sharma: Around 50 of India's 120 unicorns are domiciled abroad
“Probably 50 of our 120 unicorns are technically not Indian, right?”
Digi Yatra purges travel data immediately after passengers clear the airport
“The moment you go through the airport, and your PNR has been used, we purge it. So, there's no permanent record of your travel to enable privacy.”
Round-the-clock solar power now costs less than coal in many cases
“Today, the cost of round-the-clock solar is actually lower than the cost of coal in many cases, particularly in India.”
Doubtnut Declined a $150M Byju's Offer Before Selling for $10M
“And obviously you've heard all the stories about how they were offered one, fifty million by uses and acquisition. And finally they got sold for ten million and all that stuff”
Balasubramaniam: India Discovered Algebra, Calculus, Trigonometry, and the Binary System
“A nation which discovered algebra, calculus, trigonometry, binary system, to metallurgy, to chemistry, cannot be a nation of fools, right?”
Khalid: India Will Favor Musk's Starlink Over Domestic Telecoms
“If you give me a sort of a, if I was a betting man, I'd bet that they will probably tilt towards Elon, right?”
Khalid: Israel Cannot Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities Without US Help
“So are they going to escalate before and take out Iran's nuclear facilities? I don't think they can physically do that without help from the U.S.”
Khalid: Yoon Impeachment Will Block South Korea's MSCI Developed Upgrade
“The president is going to be impeached. And when the president is impeached, well, you can forget about economic reform. You can forget about South Korea being upgraded by MSCI from emerging market to developed markets.”
Garg: Under 5% of Indian Farmers Earn 60K-70K Rupees Per Hectare
“60 to 70,000 per hectare is my challenge. Hardly five percent of the farmers in India will be earning by doing everything in the agriculture.”
Garg: India's industrial growth stayed below 4% under Modi 2.0
“In Modi, 2.2, the industrial growth has been less than four percent for five years.”
Garg: Less than 5% of PLI manufacturing incentives disbursed after four years
“So as a result, despite four, four years of the PLI, the PL, the foreign PLIs on in total dispersed only about less than five percent of the incentives in, in this period.”
Indian Government Decriminalized Only 100 of 5,000 Recommended Business Penalties
“Finally, they did recommend to the central government that at least 5000 need not be a criminal penalty, and so a lot of work was done. But in the end, only 100 were removed.”
India's 1991 Economic Reforms Were Not Dictated by the IMF
“And you know, one of the biggest fallacies Is that these changes were made because of the IMF. This is totally false. It is true that the IMF would have said reduce the fiscal deficit, but everybody was saying reduce the fiscal deficit. The IMF would have insi…”
Sanyal: Punjab's GDP share and relative income have steadily declined since 1970s
“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…”
Sanyal: Odisha's per capita income is now higher than West Bengal's
“Odisha on the other hand, which was always the poor cousin, is now actually has a per capita income higher than a West Bengal.”
Sikri: India buys discounted Russian oil, refines it, and exports to Europe
“We have managed to get a cheap oil from Russia because they couldn't sell it in the global market. So we have been buying the oil, refining it, and selling it to Europe at a profit.”
Mobius: The world will not enter a global recession anytime soon
“I don't think the world is going to go into recession anytime soon simply because there's just too much going on, too much growth going on. Of course, you will have downturns from time to time, but these will be temporary. That will not be something that will …”
Intermediaries capture 90% of value from Indian farmers under APMC rules
“Because of this phenomenon of hundred rupees of value added, let's say in, you know, in farm produce, 90 rupees is cornered by the intermediary. The farmer, small farmer gets only 10 rupees.”
Subramanian: India's abject poverty fell from 12.2% to 2.2% over a decade
“Poverty, for instance, which is, let's say very, very abject poverty, you know, that has decreased from 12.2% in 2012 to 2.2% in, you know, in, in in, in 2022, 22.”
Parekh: China's delivery costs are 3x India's, making quick commerce unviable
“And the third factor which contributed is that we have the lowest manpower cost anywhere in the world.
Even China is three X more expensive, right?
In terms of cost per delivery, which is why quick commerce doesn't work even in China, because cost per delivery…”
Ferrari: Remini is second most used genAI app globally behind ChatGPT
“Remini is far and away the number one product for AI-based image editing, image generation in the world. It's to my knowledge, the second most used generative AI product in the world. It has over a hundred million it's only second to chat GPT as far as I can t…”
Ferrari: Bending Spoons generates profits in the hundreds of millions
“Yeah, we don't disclose that, but in the hundreds of millions.”
Krishna: Indian government and PSUs are the biggest non-payers of MSMEs
“Government is the biggest part is on one side of it where many PSUs and governments have not paid MSMEs.”
Krishna: India's PLI manufacturing incentives are not linked to job creation
“Current, the way it stands today, it has nothing to do with job creation, right? So the incentive, somebody can come set up something and like they'll get those incentives, but it's not connected to how many jobs they created.”
Kumar: 40% of Indian Teens Cannot Do Second-Grade Math or Reading
“Recently, the ACER report, which came out five months back, showed that the age group of 14 to 18. This is different from that earlier part. But age group of 14 to 18, 40% cannot do second class reading, writing, and maths.”
Kumar: 95% of India's GST Revenue Comes From Organized Sector
“That will not reduce your tax collection because 95% of the tax is collected from the organized sector. Only five percent is collected from others. And Jaitley famously said five percent units pay 95% of the tax. 95% pay only five percent of the tax.”
Kumar: 10% to 12% of India's High-Net-Worth Individuals Left
“Between 2014 and 2019 23,000 left the country. In 2019 another seven and a half thousand left. We don't have the data in between, but in 2022 it was reported another 7000 left the country. So out of the two lakh 50,000 high net worth individuals, 10 12% are le…”
Kumar: 280 Million Indians Lack Proper Employment
“So in our report, we estimated that these four kinds of unemployment mean two eighty million Indian don't have a proper job. Only three twenty million Indians have a proper job out of six hundred million.”
Kumar: Indian Real Wages Stagnated While Corporate Profits Rose
“So even though wages have risen, but in the last 10 years, the real wages have not risen because there's been inflation also. So you have on the one hand, wages not rising. On the other hand, the corporate sector profits and the organized sector profits, they …”
Nadhani: Indian SaaS engineering offers only ~1.5x cost leverage over US
“R and D you have 1.5 X leverage India to us engineers. It's not massive. Like let's say not an SF engineer, but somewhere in between engineer, like a Midwest or something.”
Bagri: Roughly 40% of all personal loans in India fund travel
“So the number of personal loans which are taken for travel is almost 40% if I'm not wrong.”
Garg: Only a handful of Indian tech companies exceed $30M–$40M ARR
“A lot of Indian companies are, have started to reach A million to million type of ARRs, but have not a lot of companies beyond a few that you can count on your hands are beyond the 30, forty million ARR today.”
Sri Batchu: Angel investing consistently underperforms index funds
“It's really important to know that it's a consistently underperforming asset class. Like you will make less money doing angel investing than putting your money in an index fund or almost any other kind of equity investment by and large.”
Kotasthane: India's Union Government Workforce Is Half the Size of America's
“If you normalize India's government to U S population to India, Indian federal union government is one half that of the U S right.”
Kotasthane: Punjab's Subsoil Water Act Caused Concentrated Burning and Delhi's Smog
“So once that happened, once you start doing that if you start Sowing your crop in June, July by when the harvesting season comes, that is also delayed and you have very little time between the harvesting season and the next cropping season. So once you have a …”
RBI Governor K.R. Puri changed banking rules for Sanjay Gandhi's Maruti
“The K. R. Puri was the governor. He changed the banking regulation norms so that the Maruti gets the loan.”
Chanchani: Indian startup IPOs will cap out at $4B this year
“So anywhere between so what is said is that for FYI, this particular financial year we'll end up having IPOs around one lakh crore, which is what? About 12 odd billion dollars? Just twelve billion dollars, right? So what does that leave for us? Maybe about, yo…”
Bihar police blinded nine people in a single night in Bhagalpur
“When they did too many, and in one night they blinded nine people, there was a big hue and cry, and then everything came out in the open, and it came to the parliament, and then a committee had to be instituted. To inquire into these blinding cases.”
Sasi: India's core Aadhaar database infrastructure has never had a verified breach
“Till date, we don't have a incident which is verified where the, that Aadhaar database has been breached. So people crying Aadhaar data breached, which is wrong. So that infrastructure was never breached according to my knowledge.”