Why in Indian media, Indian forums/discussions, so many comparisons are made in reference to China?
Here in Shanghai, or China as a whole, little or if no attention is thrown upon India. I doubt "similar population size" should ever be a factor behind choosing your benchmarks, or otherwise we India would be our center of attention.
In Shanghai media, discussions between people, predominantly we benchmarks ourselves against Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo or Singapore. Rationale is simple, similar culture, world-class advanced cities. I suggest Mumbai people, media and planners adopt similar rationale, and make benchmarks vs cities that are of similar culture, and world-class advanced.
From a national perspective, our benchmarks used to be USSR, now extending to all advanced economies, the specific country for benchmarking depends on the agenda (say US' financial industry, HK's civil servant system). Especially in social planning (education/art, health and infrastructure) we tend to gauge ourselves vs JP+4dragons, same rationale as above.
