"Both the United States and India should strive to increase the number of people who feel they are winners in (getting the benefits of) globalisation and decrease the number of people who feel that they are losers," Talbott said, delivering a talk organised by the Observer Research Foundation and Stella Maris College.
Unless the benefits of globalisation reach the poor and rural masses, they would become easy targets for militant and terrorist outfits, he cautioned.
In India, over 25 per cent of population was below the poverty line, while the percentage of poor in the US was about 12 per cent, Talbott, who is now the President of the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, said.
Acknowledging India's leadership role in the region, Talbott said the new team being set up by US President George W Bush in his second term, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, understands the importance of US-India ties in the "struggle against terror and to support freedom, liberty and democracy in the world."
He said the end of the Cold War brought a fundamental transformation in Washington's outlook towards New Delhi and the US started to look at India "afresh".
