India in its quest for sustained economic growth needs to thrash out national political consensus soon on key issues like foreign direct investment and on building world-class infrastructure to catch up with China, global business leaders and analysts said in Beijing.

"The foreign investor puts his money where there is scope for growth and profit. Everybody knows India has the potential. But translating the potential into reality needs political will and bold decisions, which countries like China are willing to take," a top executive of a multinational company told PTI.

Speaking on the sidelines of the just-concluded China Summit 2004 organised by the World Economic Forum in Beijing, the executive, who wished not to be quoted, pointed out that a majority of the top business executives and analysts who attended the Summit had mentioned India by name, along with China.

"This itself was a positive signal that the world has started to take note of India's emergence as a potential economic giant," he said.

"China and India are moving so fast that they are going to outstrip the ability of our countries to adjust," Dean of the Yale School of Management, Jeffrey Garten said at a WEF session on 'Economic Outlook: Moving towards a Market Economy.'

Senior executives of Indian companies who visited China recently also complained about the country's poor infrastructure in terms of power, airports, roads and ports and stressed that unless the government took a bold initiative to quickly expand the basic infrastructure, the country may miss the bus yet again.

"We are at a major crossroad. In the past, we have lost out to China, which has gone ahead of India by over 20 years. We have a chance now to correct our mistakes by taking bold decisions to ensure faster economic growth," a senior Indian executive said.

"It is a pity that India does not have even one international airport, which can match that in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou," a top executive of an Indian company in Shanghai noted.

For some of the Indian business executives like the chairman and managing director of Larsen and Toubro, A M Naik, the first visit to China was a "big learning experience", which helped him to understand the Chinese market better.

L&T, which is mulling major forays into China, views that India has a lot to learn from the communist nation's economic growth model and its emphasis on manufacturing sector as well on building a world-class infrastructure.

"We in India have a lot to learn from China's experience in rapidly developing its economy and infrastructure," chief operating officer of Bangalore-based i-flex solutions, N R K Raman said.

Their views were echoed by a majority of other Indian businessmen who hoped that political leaders draw lesson from China's experience in economic and social uplift.

Interestingly, the WEF organised a special 'working breakfast' session on Monday during the China Summit 2004 to dwell on India and China, the two fastest-growing economies of the world.

The WEF noted that India, as a global back office, and China, as the factory of the world, has the potential to create new business opportunities.

The session on India-China, which was not open to the media, looked into whether the two Asian giants can combine their economic synergies and whether their future relations can be built more on trade than geopolitics.