KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS with wide ranges; the true revenue could plausibly be higher, particularly if diaspora patronage responds to the named-corridor model at anything like the scale the remittance figures suggest is available. Leaning conservative on both sides is deliberate, because the argument this book makes does not need optimistic inputs to hold. The whole point is that the gap between a rounding-error cost and a thousands-of-crores value is so wide that the conclusion survives even pessimistic assumptions about how fast revenue arrives and how much verification costs. If the case depended on best-case numbers, it would be fragile; because it survives worst-case numbers on both sides, it is sturdy. A reviewer who replaces these illustrative figures with their own, harsher ones will find the shape unchanged: the AI stays trivial, the value stays large, and the only thing that moves is the date of break-even; which is exactly the uncertainty the book has been candid about throughout. There is one assumption the model cannot make conservative, and it should be named: the assumption that the behaviour change happens at all. No financial table can prove that citizens will respond to the loop; only the pilot can. So the financial model is best read as conditional; if the loop closes, here is why the money works, and the pilot is what tests the condition. The economics are 260