According to a tax and financial firm in India, NRIs and PIOs are permitted to invest in any insurance plan in India. The premiums paid during the year are also eligible for a tax deduction up to Rs.100,000. The maturity proceeds are fully tax-free and can be remitted overseas with a ceiling of Rs.10 lakh per financial year.

In the case of a green card holder who is widowed, with inherited property in India, Income tax in India only comes into the picture if one's taxable income is over Rs.160,000 and inheritors will be entitled to any income. Various rules come into play including the bank account that monies are to be deposited in. These rules differ if the person is a PIO.

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Some NRI realtors in the US are finally seeing an upturn since the housing crisis in 2008. The buyers however are mostly Indian.

According to one Manhattan based realtor, he has closed 10 deals with Indian buyers and is working on 30 more. He has helped various people buy and sell property and has now set up 'American Full House', that will cater to Indians looking for profitable deals to buy homes. He says homes in Los Angeles that sold at nearly $250,000 are now closing at just $85,000.

Experts say Indians flush with cash are keen to diversify their portfolios, particularly rich families with a minimum net worth of $1 million, and whose children are working or studying in the US. Indians are mostly interested in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other parts of southern California, as well as Phoenix and Miami.

Statistics record that Indians contributed 7% of total international home sales of $82 billion during the year ended March 2011.

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With a host of firms from Japanese automakers to telecom equipment producers moving to India, manufacturing could overtake services as the engine of growth. This is desirable, as services-led economies are vulnerable to financial upheavals.

With the German engineering technology major, Siemens, planning to make India the global hub for manufacturing its key steel plant equipment, it joins the growing ranks of firms eyeing the country as a launching pad for supplies to Asian markets. India has the manufacturing and engineering capabilities; it has a pool of skilled expertise, and its size offers it a strategic advantage for servicing markets from Myanmar down to Australia and West Asia, if necessary. The Asia-Pacific region is the epicentre of economic expansion at the moment.

Slowly but steadily, almost unnoticed, a transformation of long-term significance is taking place in the economy. Indian manufacturing is diversifying not as a result of any policy initiative but because of conditions on the ground that global players are using to their advantage.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that India may well be on its way to becoming a global manufacturing hub. The pace seems to have increased at a time when the Western economies have yet to witness a pick-up in investments in their own economies.

That change is not yet evident. India's economic successes are still identified with the IT sector and, more specifically, with a handful of firms that dominate the space. Services contribute the most to the GDP; software and business process outsourcing represent the brightest face of exports — icons of the country's passage into post-modernity.

The services sector dominates the economy in more ways than one; in terms of employment preferences, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) has overtaken manufacturing to a considerable degree. Most management or IIT graduates would prefer BFSI or IT firms for jobs over manufacturing even though salaries in the former are more prone to the vicissitudes of the business cycle.

In 2009, placement salary offerings in IT and BFSI dropped 25 per cent over 2007-08, while salaries in the manufacturing sector fell far less. Yet, the BFSI sector grabbed 39 per cent of graduates from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) followed by consulting firms that attracted 24 per cent.

Manufacturing together with the media and rating agencies had to settle for a mere 6 per cent of the future cream of Indian managerial talent.

It is this star-lit sheen of IT and BFSI sectors that also blinds analysts, keen to advice the rest of the world just how it should go about getting prosperous.

India's liberalisation has focused largely on the financial and IT sectors, and the fact that both are in their own ways connected to the global economy offers the impression of the country participating in the creation of global wealth.

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In its largest-ever investment outside India, Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest IT software provider, said it would invest $125-150 million in setting up its own campus in Shanghai.

The campus will be spread over 15 acres and developed over a period of three years with a sitting capacity of 8,000 employees with facilities for software development, labs, data centres, training facilities and food courts. The campus will have a 1,500-seater auditorium, a gym and recreational centres.

Incorporated in 2004, Infosys China today employs over 3,300 people with about 95 per cent of them being local recruits. In 2011, Infosys China recorded revenues of $78 million.

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India Inc, including political leaders, industrialists and businessmen are increasingly looking to tap the rich resources of the world's second largest continent, as two way trade between India and Africa is poised to hit $70 billion by 2015.

PM Manmohan Singh will lead a high powered delegation to Africa later this month and will visit Ethiopia and Tanzania in an effort to take the Indo-African relationship to the next level by forging greater all round ties.

An India show is to be inaugurated in Addis Ababa followed by a meeting of African trade ministers and CEOs of both countries.

According to a special adviser to the Tata Group, India is interested in Africa because of its resources and its active participation in the economic development of Africa. Many opportunities for collaboration exist.

India's investments in Africa is estimated to be over $50 billion and the value of India's total trade with the top 15 partner countries in Africa has a share of over 90 percent of the total trade in that continent.

The Indian diaspora in Africa is the second largest in the world, with 2.8 million PIOs in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

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