How do I compare India and America..?

Now that I came to America, it's very natural for me to ponder over differences between India and America.. in terms of simple day to day stuff like:

Are telephones cheaper in India or America?
Is driving cheaper in India or America (i.e. gas prices)
etc

How do I do it?

I mean, one immediate problem I face is difference in currency (approx ratio of 40) and another is difference in earning i.e. if I convert everything in INR, then you earn more in America, so cost of something should be seen as a fraction of how much you earn..

Any insights/perspectives are most welcome...
Examples?

Thanks

First, you should select what about India and America you want to compare. I guess most people want to compare Standard of Living, but I think you should also consider quality of life issues.

According to "Standard_of_living_in_India" [1] , India suffers from substantial poverty with 27.5% of the population living below the poverty line in 2004鈥?005; but the same article state that In 2006, 22 percent of Indians lived under the poverty line but that India government's aims to eradicate poverty by 2020

The same article states that the "single most common indicator used to quantify standard of living is the per capita purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted gross domestic product (GDP)." In 2006, the per capita PPP-adjusted GDP for India was US$3,737. This is about 1/10 of what the PPP is for the US.

I think that this figure can be misleading; for a number of reasons and frankly although it is objective, I would be more interested is what someone with my skills and experience could earn in the two places. Also I think I would be more interested in quality of life issues.

If I wanted to compare what you could buy, I first look at discretionary income, that is the income after subtracting taxes and normal expenses (such as rent or mortgage, food, car payments, and insurance) to maintain a certain standard of living. I would not look at gross income.

Next I might look at what things cost as a percentage of my discretionary income. Not only what thing cost but what things I could buy.

Still, to me income and what I could buy would be only of secondary importance. What I would like to measure is the quality of life.

For example, if I compare when I lived in a small college town and compared it to when I lived in a major metro area, I would say that my discretionary income was much higher in the metro area. There are more things to do and buy in the metro . On the other hand, I would say that the quality of life was much better in the small college town. Much less stress, more sense of community, and more nature beauty with more time to enjoy life. I found that in the metro area I spent considerable more time trying to get to where I wanted to go, that I spent being there; while the opposite was true in the smaller town where many things were within walking distances or within a short drive.

If you want an object measure for quality of life you might look a the SRU47 [3] listed below.