Nisha Paul (left) and Annanya Sarin

London, Oct. 18: Lord Swraj Paul’s daughter-in-law, Nisha Paul, and Annanya Sarin, a former press officer to Lakshmi Mittal, used their extensive contacts to pull in serious corporate sponsorship for a glittering charity dinner held at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, London, on Thursday night.

Nisha and Annanya, both women with strong Bengal connections, helped raise £200,000 net for slum children in India.

Nisha, who is married to Paul’s son, Akash, told The Telegraph: “I was born in Calcutta, and I went to La Martiniere School for Girls — I was in the swimming team.”

Annanya, who went on to become press officer for Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel group after leaving Mittal’s employment, was born Annanya Dutta.

“My father is Bengali — he still lives in Calcutta,” she said.

Thanks to their involvement, well-known companies agreed to help the gala dinner held by Magic Bus, a charity which has looked after 150,000 “marginalised” children mainly from the slums in Mumbai.

The plan is to extend the work of Magic Bus to other cities in India, notably Calcutta.

“Definitely,” emphasised Nisha, who is chairman of Magic Bus’s fundraising committee and one of its trustees. “It’s a young charity and we want to grow it and take it to Calcutta.”

Last night’s lavish dinner, preceded by a champagne reception for well-heeled Indians and other British supporters, was one of the most successful Indian charity occasions held in London in recent years.

Despite the financial crisis in the global markets, Barclays Wealth, Dutsche Bank, ICICI Bank, Stemcor, a steel group, British Telecom, Corus, the Taj hotels group and Cox & Kings, the travel firm, were among those who supported the occasion.

“It was as though there was no financial crisis,” Annanya commented.

The credit for setting up Magic Bus goes to a 41-year-old Englishman, Matthew Spacie, who used to work in India and resolved to set up a charity for children after noticing little boys and girls watching a game of rugby he was playing through fencing at the Bombay Gymkhana.

Spacie, who now lives permanently in Mumbai and is married to an Indian wildlife photographer, Ashima Narayan, said: “We look after 150,000 boys and girls, aged seven to 15, but there are 176 million marginalised children in India.”

Magic Bus began with rugby but now uses football as the vehicle to lift the lives of slum and street children.

Tessa Jowell, the British minister responsible for the 2012 London Olympics who attended last night’s function, said: “Magic Bus is an excellent charity using modern techniques to address vital development needs of children living in extreme poverty. They show how football is so much more than just a game and the power of sport to change lives.”

An auction of several prizes raised £84,000. The highest figure — £14,000 — was paid by a bidder who got four tickets, courtesy Lalit Modi, to the next IPL final in Mumbai on May 24, 2009.

That money for poor Indian children should be raised at a Dorchester dinner may appear baffling except that such functions have become an established and effective way of raising money for charitable causes in India.

From The Telegraph’s point of view, the most significant remarks last night were about the prospects for Bengal after the Singur fiasco.

An insight into the thinking within the Tata Group was provided by Subhash Thaker, vice president (sales and marketing in UK and Europe) of the Indian Hotels Company which offered one of the prizes — a romantic weekend for two at the Lake Palace in Udaipur, with the flights thrown in by Cox & Kings (this bid fetched £6,000 for Magic Bus).

Speaking with remarkable candidness, Thaker said: “Most investors would not go to Bengal because of the communists but Ratan Tata wanted to take a personal risk. He wanted to help Bengal, one of the poorest states, but you cannot do much if your help is rejected. I do hope I am wrong but others may not touch Bengal for the next 40 to 50 years.”

Thaker said many others like him within the Tata family understood the attachment of farmers to land. “But you have to look at the bigger picture. Either we failed or Bengal failed.”

Then he provided a note of hope for the future. “Despite all that has happened, we still hope we can help Bengal. Like Ratan Tata, many in the Tata Group understand that what India is today is because of Bengal. It still has the brightest intellectuals in India. Bengal took the lead during the independence movement. If India today is free, it is because of Bengal. The rest of India owes a lot to Bengal. It is a debt that we wanted to pay. It is because of that I hope we will invest in Bengal and others will still come.”