Relation With India Is Rock Solid With Challenges: U.S. Lawmaker

"What we have seen in the last two years that the growth has really slowed down considerably. The Indian economy is not doing very well at this stage. India is in a period of bit of a funk. Outsiders have also become quite frustrated with India," he said.

"Most foreign businesses are very frustrated at the pace of reform in India and the kind of obstacles we throw up to overseas investment in India. This is the investment that India badly needs and the kind of scoring self-goals by these policies," he said.

"As such there is quite a bit of frustration in the Congress about India," Subramanian said.

Dinyar Devitre, former CFO of Altria Group, and Rukmini Banerji, director of Pratham ACER Center, were the other eminent speakers at the gala, attended by 200 leaders from the business community, World Bank, USAID, the Gates Foundation and individual philanthropists.

Pratham, which means "first" in Sanskrit, began its work in the slums of Mumbai in 1994 where it was established as a Public Charitable Trust in 1994 by the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, UNICEF and several prominent citizens of India.