Sunday, April 19, 2009

India's crystal ball

In the race of development, it is a well known fact that the U.S. is lapping quite a few countries.

India used to be one of them, but now, with global economical meltdown the American juggernaut has slowed down. India cannot catch up with the U.S., but the current scenario has thrown up some interesting possibilities.

India won it's independence from the British rule about 200 years after the U.S. won theirs. This effectively puts Bharat 200 years behind America. Globalization, significant economic decisions and healthy development have helped us shorten the divide.

All these factors stack up and put an interesting picture, where the U.S. has become a model economy for India. Look carefully and you will find that India as a nation is going through a lot of things that the U.S. has already experienced. The Great Depression, the bouts of moral policing are some of the red-flags in the comparison.

Here, I would like to clarify that I am not indicating that India is an U.S. re-breed, but the point I want to drive home is we can use U.S. as a scale for our development and skillfully avoid the roadblocks that they have stumbled on.

Who knows, we may be setting the pace someday?