NEW DELHI — Politics and cricket may be the standbys of Indian small talk, but if you really want to get a conversation going here, turn the dial to China.
India's northern neighbor is the hottest topic in town, the buzzword on everyone's lips. Whether politicians or pundits, entrepreneurs or engineers, nobody here, it seems, can obsess enough over China.
Who has more people? China does, with 1.3 billion, though India ranks a close second, with just over a billion. Who has built more roads, bigger airports, taller skyscrapers? China again, by a convincing margin. But who boasts more billionaires? Chalk that one up for the home team, an edge that makes Indians puff with pride.
Such comparisons have become something of a national parlor game here as Indians increasingly look to China as the yardstick by which they measure their own progress and success. Excited by their country's development boom, they are now eager to play catch-up with the economic big bang on the other side of the border.
" 'Obsessive' is a mild term for the kind of attention that China gets, and it's always in terms of how many roads do we have, how many billionaires do we have," said Subarno Chattarji, a professor at the University of Delhi. "They are the role model."
Newspapers brim with references to the Middle Kingdom, backed up by explanations, charts and graphs showing how India compares. Articles parse how India stacks up against China in foreign investment, literacy, Internet use, quality of higher education and even water distribution.
The fixation is fueled by a mixture of admiration, insecurity and rivalry. At root is the grudging recognition that China, for all its problems, remains the runaway leader on many fronts, in spite of India's emergence as a high-tech colossus, the cascade of jobs created by Western outsourcing and the nudge into the middle class of millions of aspiring workers.
"China has been successful -- let's accept it. We want to emulate China no matter how we say we are different and want to be different," said Chetan Ahya, an analyst with Morgan Stanley in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. "The fact of the matter is that they're on top."
Such a bluntly complimentary attitude isn't without precedent. As long ago as the 7th century, a Chinese Buddhist monk returning from 17 years of travel and study in India asked, "Is there anyone in the five parts of India who does not admire China?"
