Today we have 5000 years of world history and data of over a 100 countries at our disposal. We can find out what works, what won’t. Find out what is the impact of our actions, what leads to success, what causes failures, and how to increase our effectiveness and get the maximum out of our limited resources in the fastest possible time.
That is why American universities will have center for Foreign studies which track the developments in Europe, Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Asia. Sometimes to concentrate their efforts they will put a country specific center, Like Center of Indian Studies or Center of Chinese Studies. (there are 100s of them all over the world)
Even Peking University of China has a center of Indian Studies (which recently got a 50 Lakh grant from Government of India).
However how many Indian universities have such Counterparts (except JNU). We could learn a lot from China, Japan, Europe or America. Conditions in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, is very similar to what is found in India. We could learn from the SE Asian crisis (Korea, Thailand, Indonesia). Then why not study them?
My mother used to advice me.
A normal man learns from His own mistakes,
A wise man learns from other’s mistakes,
and a fool never learns.