For tips on frugality, look to India

By Anand Giridharadas

Published: December 18, 2008

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VERLA, India: Watching Americans try to make themselves frugal is like watching Mongolians try to make Bordeaux wine.

Thrift does not come naturally to a country that turned layaway, zero-interest home loans and pre-approved credit cards into a mode of living. And so as they trudge through a cruel holiday season, Americans are cutting back, but hesitatingly and maladroitly.

They are standing in line by the thousands at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, pushing and pulling, and on one occasion trampling an obstructive employee to death with their frantic, frugal feet.

They are embracing the alien idea of sacrifice. Mothers are forgoing personal shopping to spend on the family, and, according to Consumer Reports, pet owners are depriving themselves before shortchanging their pets.

Fourteen percent of Americans are making gifts, not buying them, that magazine reported. Twelve percent are plotting to pass on to others the gifts others give them. Many plan to tip less, scale back charity and go shopping accompanied by that leafy commodity so foreign to Americans: cash.

And then it hit me. The jostling in line, the stampeding, the motherly sacrifice, the homemade presents, the regifting, the thick wads of rubber-banded cash: America is becoming India!

India is to frugality as Bethlehem is to Jesus. But in recent years, the megacorporations of the West, not content to foment irresponsibility at home, sent pinstriped missionaries here to nudge genetically predisposed savers to spend.

Citibank sprinkled a borrowing-wary nation with small loans for motorcycles: Live a little! Visa peddled plastic to lovers of gold: Let your hair down!

Millions of Indians converted, but millions of others ignored them - and, for the West, luckily so. As rich countries enter a new era of scarcity, the best practices of the gurus of frugality can serve as a textbook for frugality's new pupils.

The first tip of the Indian frugalist is to wear your money. One rarely misplaces funds when they are kept in gold and hooked through your nose or strung around your neck. Some Indian women wear saris woven with gold thread. The danger of nudity discourages whimsical spending.

The truly frugal segment friends and associates into two camps: those who merit their money and those who don't.

Cellphone calls may cost a cent a minute in India, but why call people who only rate a text? Why text when you can make a "missed call"? Millions of Indians dial and quickly hang up, hoping for the other person to call back and foot the bill.

Your upholstery is not for everyone. Sofas fray and stain; there is, in the final analysis, a cost per posterior. So cover your sofa with bed sheets and remove them for only the best behinds.

So, too, with crockery: Buy a set of expensive plates and keep it in a case where your friends can see them while they eat from the cheap plates you actually set before them.

When eating out, order soups fractionally: a certain number of soups split by a certain number of people. Start with "one into two," the realm of Indian beginners, then graduate in time to "three into five" and "six into seven."

For entrees, count the diners at the table, subtract one and order that many dishes - which, for a table of four, saves 25 percent over the one-person-one-dish norm.

Of course, if you can, avoid restaurants altogether. Weddings are big here, and Indians who keep an ear to the ground can eat free every night. Wedding crashers are not a movie in India; they are a way of life, and I'm told it takes three successful blend-ins before guests begin to take your presence for granted and invite you to their own weddings.

In India, nothing cannot be recycled. Wedding gifts, birthday gifts, anniversary gifts, gifts for Hindu festival of Diwali: forwardable are they all. Presents are opened carefully so that the wrapping paper can wrap again. Plastic shopping sacks are reincarnated as garbage bags. Used, licked stamps are enlisted for further tours when the post office fails to mark them.

And what cannot be reused whole can often be recycled for parts. In Dharavi, the Mumbai slum, workers in dingy rooms sort the jettisoned - plastic spoons, watches, mobile phones.

Every shard of every ware has a value. Each piece is disassembled, then the pieces are melted, reassembled and sold - all for a profit, not as a tax-guzzling government program.

Within the household, Indian frugalists think strategically, like MBA's. They do not let their children study art history. Children are equities, and good investors build a diverse portfolio by rearing one police officer, one software coder, one retail clerk. They sequence their educations such that the eventual profits from each child subsidize the schooling of the next one.