In the US, you can actually get a specially built insurance policy that acts as a savings/retirement account. There's a significant tax advantage to it, and you gain a lot of financial flexibility once it's funded. It's not a complete replacement for other forms of retirement saving, but provides a nice bit of diversification. You can read more about it here.

BTW, I follow gold markets fairly closely through several financial newsletters and I've always been impressed by how Indians treat gold (esp. jewelry) as a form of savings. It's unfortunate that that's pretty rare. Of course, gold has some drawbacks, but once again it's about diversification.