Two lessons US can learn from India

India is by no means close to being a super power. It is still battling poverty, health care and education issues. Its per capita income is still very low - not even close to any developed nation. But there are two areas in which US can learn from India's meteoric rise in the recent past.

First lesson - Education is important. In present India, uneducated people don't get the social status educated people get even if the uneducated people have money. There is nothing to boast about this, but it shows thinking of the society and importance of the education in the society. There is a very good chance that a peon (a messenger or an orderly in an office) commonly found in Mumbai offices has an undergraduate degree. No matter what you do, a rule of thumb in modern India is - you must, at least, have an undergraduate degree. Modern, globalized, knowledge based economies require knowledge workers - educated workers. United States has much better infrastructure for higher education - way better than India. What is lacking here is the will of the people to utilize it. If people did not wake up today, they will be jobless tomorrow and they will be forced to learn this hard way. Fortunately, the president elect understands urgency of the situation.

Another important lesson is living within your means. Americans love to spend and our economy thrives on spenders. Most of the spending is done using borrowed money - credit cards. This is not the case in India. I went to Mumbai in the March of 2008 and I was talking to a home builder about sub prime mortgage problem in United states. "We don't have sub prime problem. Nobody takes loans here to buy houses!" he said. To a large extent this is true. My father bought a condo in Mumbai (at a comparable price in Los Angeles) and he did not borrow a single penny! My father is not considered upper middle class in Mumbai! He saved for this his whole life. I am not saying stop buying houses with loan, but you can at least not join the expensive gym if you can't afford it. You should not buy an expensive car if it's not within your means. People here need to stop spending money on the wants that may not be needs if they can't afford it. They need to learn to distinguish clearly between the wants and the needs. People in India and China have seen worst days before. Their governments do not do enough. India has no unemployment benefits! Because of this, people were forced to discipline themselves! If people here don't learn this now, they will learn this by hard way in coming years. Economic booms and busts will come and go. If financial foundation - savings in the economy are strong, people will be able to withstand these shocks easily.