America’s greatness does not lie merely in the size of its economy, the strength of its military, the reach of its technology companies or the global dominance of the dollar. Its deeper strength lies in something far more human: America permits people to fail.

More importantly, it permits them to rise again.

In much of the world, failure becomes an identity. A businessman whose company collapses is no longer described as a businessman who failed in one venture; he becomes “a failure.” Friends retreat, lenders close their doors, society whispers, and every later achievement is viewed through the lens of the earlier collapse. The financial default becomes a social conviction, often one from which there is no appeal.

America, at its best, draws an important distinction. It separates fraud from failure, dishonesty from miscalculation, and criminality from commercial risk. Fraud must be investigated and punished. Creditors must be protected. Promoters must remain accountable for diversion, deception and abuse. But an honest entrepreneur whose assumptions proved wrong, whose market disappeared or whose business was overwhelmed by debt is not treated as permanently untouchable.

The American bankruptcy system is built around this philosophy. Chapter 11 is not merely a graveyard for companies. It is a legal workshop in which a viable enterprise may reorganise its debts, negotiate with creditors, preserve jobs and attempt to return to business. American law even uses one of the most powerful expressions in capitalism: the “fresh start.”

That phrase captures an entire national instinct. A balance sheet may be broken without the human being behind it being broken forever.

Donald Trump is an especially dramatic example. The frequently repeated claim that he personally went bankrupt several times is not technically correct. Trump himself did not file for personal bankruptcy; companies associated with his casino and hotel businesses entered Chapter 11 proceedings on multiple occasions. Those restructurings were serious commercial failures and creditors suffered consequences. They should neither be concealed nor romanticised.

Yet those failures did not legally or socially disqualify him from attempting another enterprise, rebuilding his brand, returning to public life or ultimately being elected President of the United States. Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, and he produces fiercely divided opinions, his story demonstrates a distinctively American proposition: a failed business venture need not be the final chapter of a person’s life.

America understands that even to fail, one must first have tried.

The entrepreneur who opens a factory, launches a technology company, builds a hotel or bets on a new product is taking a risk that most people never take. Many ventures will fail. Some will fail because the idea was poor, some because execution was weak, some because debt was excessive, and others because the world changed without warning. If every failure is followed by permanent humiliation, criminal suspicion and social exile, rational people will stop taking ambitious risks.

Then society may avoid a few failures, but it will also prevent many successes.

Silicon Valley was not built by people who were right every time. It was built in an ecosystem where an unsuccessful start-up could become experience rather than stigma; where an investor could ask a failed founder, “What did you learn?” instead of only asking, “How badly did you lose?” Failure was not necessarily celebrated as an outcome. The courage to attempt, learn and return was celebrated.

This is also one reason immigrants, including Indians, often achieve extraordinary success in the United States. Talent exists in India in abundance. Ambition exists here in abundance. Work ethic certainly exists here in abundance. But America frequently adds a crucial ingredient: permission to begin again.

An Indian who may be constrained at home by family history, hierarchy, reputation, age, caste, class or an earlier setback can arrive in America and be judged more directly by what he or she can build now. The country does not always live up to that ideal, but the ideal itself has immense economic power. It tells the newcomer that the past is evidence, not destiny.

India, unfortunately, often reacts differently to failure. We do not merely examine a failed enterprise; we conduct a public trial of the entrepreneur’s entire character. A default can produce endless headlines, social ostracism and institutional paralysis even before wrongdoing has been established. Banks become reluctant to support a second attempt. Friends distance themselves. Former admirers rewrite history and claim they had always foreseen the collapse.

Our culture can be curiously forgiving of inherited success and merciless toward attempted success.

This attitude has a cost. It drives entrepreneurs toward excessive caution, encourages families to prefer safe careers over innovation, and teaches young people that reputation is better protected by never making a large attempt. It also creates a destructive confusion between a genuine business failure and a dishonest promoter. When both are treated alike, the honest suffer unfairly, and the truly dishonest become harder to distinguish.

India has taken an important step through the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code by recognising resolution, restructuring and time-bound closure as legitimate economic objectives. But changing the statute is easier than changing the social instinct. A second-chance economy requires more than tribunals. It requires banks willing to assess a rebuilt borrower on present merit, regulators capable of distinguishing commercial failure from misconduct, and a society mature enough to believe that one collapse need not erase a lifetime of ability.

Celebrating failure does not mean celebrating unpaid debt. It does not mean that lenders should absorb losses cheerfully or that entrepreneurs should escape scrutiny. It means celebrating the courage to return after the accounts have been settled, the law has taken its course and the lessons have been learned. It means refusing to waste human talent merely because its first deployment went wrong.

Every great success contains decisions that could have ended in failure. Every celebrated entrepreneur has at some stage stood close to disaster. The difference between a dynamic economy and a fearful one is often whether that moment becomes an education or an obituary.

America tells the failed entrepreneur: explain what happened, accept the consequences, restructure what can be saved, and try again.

India too often says: you failed once, therefore you must remain a failure.

That must change. A nation of 1.4 billion people cannot become an entrepreneurial superpower while treating every honest commercial setback as permanent disgrace. We must punish fraud relentlessly, but we must stop punishing courage merely because it did not succeed on the first attempt.

America is great because it understands that failure is not the opposite of success. Very often, failure is the road to success.

And sometimes, the person emerging from bankruptcy court does not disappear from public life. He rebuilds, returns, and walks into the White House.