This document contains a series of statements from experts on facts about India that are often misunderstood or unknown. It discusses facts around definitions of rural and urban areas, the role of agriculture in water usage, cultivable land in India compared to other nations, and the education levels of politicians in India. The document aims to provide useful context around various topics to give a more informed understanding of India.

1. …This is what they said.
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2. Why does it matter: Many of us feel that there are too many
people in all governments in India. This is not necessarily so.
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- Neelkanth Mishra (@neelkanthmishra),
India Strategist at Credit Suisse and columnist
Source: Credit Suisse research

3. Why does it matter: Many government policies in taxation and
spending depend on the definition of areas as rural or urban. If
we follow alternate definitions of what is urban, we could find
that up to 65% of India is urban!
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- Nitin Pai, Co-founder and Director of Takshashila institute (@acorn)
Source: Whats in a definition? … https://tinyurl.com/yav636mt

4. Why does it matter: Birth in a relatively hygienic institution
significantly reduces infant and maternal mortality. This is a
good in itself and also leads to future decrease in population
growth rate.
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- Mandira Kala, Head Research,
PRS Legislative Research (@PRSLegislative)
Source: National Family Health Survey – 4, India fact sheet
https://tinyurl.com/y9g7kzod (Question 43)

5. Why does it matter: Triumphant discussions of the size of Indian
economy hide the fact that the much bigger contribution to this
size comes from our large population and not from the income
of individual citizens!
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- Manish Agrawal (@manishbgagarwal)
Founding member, AskHow India.
Source: World Bank / Wikipedia

6. Why does it matter: Memes float around saying that the number
of Income Tax payers in India is extremely low. These memes
typically divide the number of tax payers by the entire population
of India whereas they should exclude the less than 15 year olds
(more than half the population), non-working women and people
engaged in agriculture. Furthermore, the exemption limit in India
is very high (2.0-2.5x per capita GDP) when compared to other
countries. This excludes many more individuals from the
income tax bracket. It would be better to focus more on tax
evasion by existing taxpayers to improve tax collections.
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- Anirudha Datta, author,
‘Half a Billion Rising: The Emergence of The Indian Woman’
Source: Author’s calculations

7. Why does it matter: When we hear of water shortages, our minds
automatically go to leaking taps, swimming pools and industries.
Most shortages are however, caused by over usage of water by
agriculture. We can contribute much more to water conservation
by change in personal habits than by consuming less water
directly. For example, by consuming less sugar.
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- Yogesh Upadhyaya, Founder AskHow India (@AskHowIndia)
Source: India Infrastructure Report, 2011 IDFC

8. Why does it matter: The fact that the country has more
cultivable land than much larger countries such as US, Canada,
Brazil and China has implications across a host of issues such
as density of population, the country’s agriculture production,
land acquisition and composition of its working population.
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- Ajay Dwivedi, Director at
India Growth Partners Private Limited
and Founding member, AskHow India (@AskHowIndia)
Source: https://tinyurl.com/y87832rk, accessed July 18, 2018

9. Why does it matter: Lazy criticism of politicians brands them as
uneducated and this is just not true. There are valid criticisms of
parliamentarians but their lack of education is not one of them.
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- Dr. M. R. Madhavan, President and co-Founder
PRS Legislative Research (@PRSLegislative)
Source: https://tinyurl.com/y8lplt3w

10. Why does it matter: Across Lok Sabha (543 seats), State
Legislatures (4120 seats ), Urban Local Bodies (4,635 local
bodies) and Rural Local Bodies (2,61,946 local bodies) there is a
lot of legitimate political activity. Yet, we rarely discuss how this
activity should be funded and worry only about illegitimate
funding.
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- Pramad Jandhyala,
Founding member, AskHow India
https://tinyurl.com/y8s23qpf

11. Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/AskHowIndia/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/askhowindia
Slideshare
https://www.slideshare.net/AskHowIndia
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