Visits to crowded Indian urban centers unleash sensory assaults: colorful dress and lilting chatter provide a backdrop to every manner of commerce, from small shops to peddlers to beggars.

To be sure, India has achieved enviable success in business services, like the glistening call centers in Bangalore and elsewhere. But in the global jousting for manufacturing jobs, India does not get its share.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.

Most troublesome is the legalization of 'crowd funding,' the ability of start-up companies to raise capital from small investors on the Internet.

It does not provide a great backdrop, at least for now.

Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much everyone else.