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 1,011 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
Rajeev: Micron's Gujarat subsidy equaled a third of India's higher ed budget
“The government of India, ah, spent, ah, 50 percentage of the total capital cost of micron company. For establishing a semiconductor company in Gujarat, 20% from Gujarat, 70 percentage incentive. That means for 16,500 core rupees for a single company. Total exp…”
Garg: India's GDP growth in dollar terms was slower under Modi than UPA
“But the 10 year period of Narendra Modi from 2014 15 to 2023 24, it has gone up from 1.8 trillion To something close to 3.6 trillion. So it's little less than doubled. So while it was three times in those 10 years in dollar terms, it is about two times. So it …”
Sikri: China armed Pakistan with nuclear weapons while the US looked away
“And they have given Pakistan
[526] Rajiv Sikri: The nuclear weapons.
[528] Rajiv Sikri: They've given them the technology.
[530] Rajiv Sikri: The Chinese gave it to them.
[532] Rajiv Sikri: The Americans winked at it.”
Kotasthane: India's Lower-Level Government Employees Are Among the World's Highest Paid
“At the lower levels of government beyond apart from the IAS, et cetera, the salaries that people in government get, that is some of the highest in the world.”
Senpaty: Bank NPAs hit 10% on Tier 2 and Tier 3 education loans
“Whereas if you compare it with banks, once they move out from IITs and go towards other instit institutes, tier two, tier three institutes their NPS shoot up to close to around a 10% sort of level.”
AI coding improvements boost model performance across unrelated non-coding tasks
“When the models improve in coding, they have out of domain performance. They also improve in other tasks that have nothing to do with coding for reasons we don't fully understand.”
Saxena: AI startups are hitting $100M ARR in two years under 50 people
“Today with AI, we are seeing companies. It's not impossible to see a company that gets to a hundred million ARR in two years with less than 50 people, right?”
Dübendorfer: Switzerland has produced 58 unicorns in the last 12 years
“Unicorns, the companies that had a billion dollar valuation or more in the last 12 years, we found 58 of them, where we have a public proof that they reached a one billion valuation.”
Kumar: 90% of e-Shram registered workers earn under 10,000 rupees monthly
“So, 90% of those who are registered, they are saying that we are earning less than 10,000 rupees per month, right?”
Kumar: India's record forex reserves are dangerously built on debt, not trade
“Next, you said that the debt, the India's foreign exchange reserves are at a high, but that is built on capital flows. That is not built on our trade and current account surpluses. So that means it's built on debt.”
Kumar: India's public sector never exceeded 27% of GDP at peak
“So in India, even at its peak, the public sector is not contributing more than 27% of the GDP. 73% was all private sector. So India has been a capitalist country all through, but with a welfare component, you know.”
Prof. Arun Kumar: India's tax-to-GDP ratio is among the world's lowest at 17%
“So our tax GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the world at 17%. Our direct tax GDP ratio is also one of the lowest in the world at about six and a half percent.”
Prof. Arun Kumar: Indian states receive only 30-35% of central taxes despite 41% mandate
“And of that, 41% is supposed to go to the states as per the finance commission and so on, right? But the way the center collects the CES and the other things, only 30% is going to the, or 35% is going to the states, right?”
Indian businesses face 6,000 regulations that carry criminal penalties, per ORF study
“There is a study, Siddharth, that came out, which I want you and your viewers to read. It's called Jailed for Doing Business. It was done by ORF, Observer Research Foundation in Delhi. Look at the 6000 regulations that companies have to face, and some of them …”
Garg: Open-source models trail proprietary SOTA models by only 6-12 months
“I also think that open source has demonstrated that while it can't compete with the SOTA models, it's only six to 12 months away.”
Makhija: Unicommerce is the only profitable player among its top five rivals
“Although in our ecosystem, we are the only profitable player as of now amongst the top five players”
Sikri: US blockage of WTO tribunal eliminated appellate dispute resolution
“For example, the Americans held up the appellate tribunal of the WTO. So now there is no appellate tribunal to which any country can go in case they have a problem.”
Sikri: China is recalling technicians working on iPhone production in India
“They're calling back their engineers, technicians who are working on iPhone production because India is emerging as an iPhone thing.”
Sikri: India withheld SCO defense endorsement over Pahalgam terror attack omission
“We did not endorse the Iran, their statement on Iran being attacked by Israel because they did not endorse Pahlgahm. And we did not sign on to the SCO defense minister because Pahlkam was not mentioned.”
Sanyal: Regulatory bodies ban corporate branding, preventing an Indian KPMG
“Our professional bodies explicitly ban branding. So I cannot create a KPMG.”
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.”
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”
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: 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.”
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 …”
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: Bending Spoons generates profits in the hundreds of millions
“Yeah, we don't disclose that, but in the hundreds of millions.”
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: 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 …”
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.”
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.”