"The economic dominance of the USA is already over", said Peter Drucker, the management guru in an interview with the editor-at-large of Fortune, Brent Schlender. "What is emerging is a world economy, blocks represented by NAFTA, the European Union and the ASEAN.

There is no centre in this world economy. India is becoming a power house very fast. The medical school in New Delhi is now perhaps the best in the world. And technology graduates of the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Banglore are as good as any in the world. Also India has 150 million people for whom English is their main language. So India is becoming a knowledge centre.

As per Schlender, "In contrast, the greatest weakness of China is its incredibly small portion of educated people. China has only 1.5 million college students out of a population of over 1.3 billion. On pro rata basis with America it should have 12 million or more in colleges."

There is enormous underdeveloped hinterland with excess rural population. Thus there is though enormous manufacturing potential. However the likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the cities without upheavals seems very dubious.

You don't have that problem in India because they have already done an amazing job of absorbing excess rural population into cities, its rural population got down from 90 to 54 per cent without any upheavals.

Everybody says China has eight per cent growth and India little only three per cent but that is a total misconception as per Peter Drucker. India's progress is far more impressive than China.

On the other side, Jeffrey D. Sachs in his article, "Welcome to the Asian Century", (Fortune January 26, 2004) has projected the future scenario from his perspective. He says, by 2005 China and may be India will have overtaken the US economy in size. To friends and foes alike, the US appears to be unchallenged power in the world. The French call the USA hyper power.

Neocons believe it is a new Rome. But both greatly exaggerate US preeminence and its staying power. American power rests on advanced technology which is increasingly available to the whole world.

While at present, the economics of China and India are considerably smaller than that of the US, China is likely to overtake and India to equal the US economy in size by mid century (2050). As the world's economy centre shifts to Asia, the US preeminence will inevitably diminish.

Measured in comparable units of purchasing power the U.S. economy at $10.7 trillion, is currently almost twice the size of China's 6.3 trillion and three times the size of India's $3.6 trillion.

The much higher US per capita income almost eight time that of China and roughly 11 times that of India is partially offset by the much larger population of the two Asian countries.

Both China and India squandered the chance for rapid economic growth in the first decades after world war II because of Mao's communism and Nehru's socialism.

Now the two economies are souring. China's aggregate GNP has grown by about 10 per cent a year since the late 1970 and India has grown by about 6 per cent a year since 1991 compared to USA economy growth of about 3.5 per cent.

However this soaring growth of China and India will decline as the income gap with US narrows. Extrapolating on the rule of thump given by Jeffrey China would reach about half the US per capita income level by 2050 while its projected population of some 1.4 billion will be about 3.4 times the US population of about 400 million.

At that point China's GNP would be about 75 per cent larger than that of the US. By a similar calculation, India's per capita income with a population four times as large, leading to an overall economy about the same size as the US. Of course, war, disease political instability and, even less, tumultuous economic blunders can play havoc with such projections.

Moreover the US is facing not only China and India but also the rest of an integrated Asian economy that links Southern Asia, South East Asia and North East Asia. On the basis of current trends and as rough estimate of world GNP (up from current one third) could reach about half with about 60 per cent of world population.

The US share of world population will remain about 5 per cent which means its overall economic weight could slide from more than one fifth world GNP today to perhaps half by 2005.

From a political point of view, the vain glorious vision of the US as the new Rome will be dashed. A recent attempt of Bush has failed to find Asian allies to bash China over its exchange rate policies since China's Asian neighbours clearly understand that China is engine of growth.

Some US strategists harbour hope that Asia's dynamic rise can somehow be contained, yet due to our interaction in our fates any serious Asian crisis would almost surely enmesh the whole world including the USA.

Assuming Asia's continued success, the 21st century could will be a unprecedented success and scientific advance but one in which the US will have to learn to be one of many successful economies rather than world's indispensable country.

This in turn calls for more enlightened and balanced leadership in the US than the present group of Neocons headed by Bush who visualize the US as reincarnation of the Roman Empire.