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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

What India can learn from America at 250

The US is a country under considerable strain, with its politics polarised and immigration debate bitter. India should therefore resist both reflexive admiration and reflexive rejection.

America began, in a curious sense, as a failed search for India. When Christopher Columbus sailed west in 1492, he was looking for a route to Asia and the Indies. He found the Americas instead. History has a taste for irony. More than five centuries later, and 250 years after the American Declaration of Independence, India can profitably look west and ask what it might learn from the country that emerged from that accidental encounter.

Agreed, India cannot replicate America’s geography, its historical timing, its abundance of land and natural resources, or the extraordinary advantage of emerging from the two world wars with its industrial base intact. Nor should India imitate America’s society. India is an old civilisation organised into a modern republic. America is a modern republic that had to construct a national identity from successive waves of migration.

The interesting lessons lie elsewhere. Three American habits deserve particular attention.

Power belongs closer to the problem

Visitors to the US are often preoccupied with Washington. Americans themselves experience much of government much closer to home. The country has an extraordinarily dense ecology of local government. The 2022........

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