"We no longer discuss the future of India: We say 'the future is India," Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said at the conference organised by the US-India Business Council.

In 30 years, he predicted, India would "certainly have achieved" 100 percent literacy, become a developed country, enjoy the same fundamentals as the United States, and should have resolved the thorny Kashmir problem with Pakistan.

The one-day conference assessed the US-India relationship over the last three decades and debated what the next 30 years could hold for the partnership between the world's most populous and oldest democracies.

Nath cited India's potential as a key global foreign investor, saying Indian investments in Britain have already exceeded British investments in India.

Indian investments in Australia have also outstripped Australian investment in India, he said.

"Even with China, with whom our trade a decade ago was just a billion dollars a year, it is now more than a billion dollars a month," he said.

By 2035, "I am confident that we would have provided a standard of living for our people comparable at least to what developed countries enjoy today," a buoyant Nath told his audience of largely American and Indian business leaders.