Economists joke that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose your job too. By that token, a depression, which is a severe or long recession, is not even on the horizon, let alone a devastating breakdown of an economy that would constitute an economic collapse. The good times will continue to roll in India, even if a little slowly.

Promising countries account for half of the world's economy, and many of their economies are experiencing growth rates of 6% to 7%. So a severe slowdown in the most developed countries would still leave the world with an annual growth rate of around 4%, according to the World Economic Forum.

Traditionally, conservative thinking about how to respond to a recession was to reduce spending, hunker down and wait for good times to return. This is no longer good advice. In fact, such behavior would be foolish. Well-managed companies and IT shops should look at the recession as an opportunity.

Intentionally intelligent companies know that an economic dip is the best time to make innovative IT investments that can create differentiation. If those investments are deployed when competitors are retrenching, they can grow the bottom line.

Still, a US recession is not something that India needs to panic about. The credit crisis might have a positive or negative effect on the outsourcing industry. Downturn in the US economy plus possible recession means technology and outsourcing as solutions to the need to slash overheads and minimize any negative impact on the bottom line.

So stop waiting for the politicians and economists to make up their minds. It's time to get busy!