The passing of the India Nuclear Deal by US Senate is one fluttering proof of what could be achieved in Capitol Hill by sheer lobbying. When Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the floor on Thursday to propose the India nuclear legislation, there was almost a reassured calm among the Indian American community as well as top diplomats on both sides who had hard-lobbied for the deal, that the nuclear deal would face no more hurdles.

For, Lugar is not only a foreign policy expert, but also the co-author of the Nunn-Lugar Programme that secured and destroyed materials that could be used for proliferating weapons of mass destruction at the end of the Cold War. In the US Congress, his word on non-proliferation counts.

Therefore, for both the Bush administration as well as Indian diplomats, it was crucial to win over Lugar and his House of Representatives counterpart Henry Hyde if there was any hope of getting the nuclear deal passed by Congress.

Pro-India lobbying groups and spin doctors from at least six major multinationals including Boeing, Bechtel, GE and Raytheon had parked themselves at Capitol Hill for nearly a year.

According to lobbying sources "the Indian American community, along with the Indian government and the MNCs interested in new-found nuclear market in India, spent a few million dollars in campaign funds, gala dinner events, high-tech presentations to congressmen and senators, multimedia dockets and specially-organised trips to India to make them feel comfortable about the deal.”

Full credits are also due to the untiring duo of Shyam Saran the ex Foriegn Secretary who was apponted as India's Special Envoy just to devote his full time to carry the deal through, and Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State to convince Congress on the nuclear deal than anybody else.

In the words of South Asia scholar, foreign policy expert and author of "India: Emerging Power" Stephen Cohen: “Shyam Saran and Nicholas Burns have done more to convince Congress on the nuclear deal than anybody else. More so Shyam Saran who, with his regular visits to Washington to speak with congressional leaders, almost single-handedly was responsible for the deal to reach such a stage.” They have been together so much that Burns now calls Saran his “personal friend” and “the most knowledgeable person in the world on the US-India nuclear agreement”. With President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice involved with other events such as the war in Iraq, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and a tense truce between Israel and Hezbollah, it was left to Burns to negotiate the deal and take it forward ever since the July 18, 2005 joint declaration

According to DNA World, The irony could not have been lost on Senator George Allen. The Virginia senator, best known for his “Macaca” allusion to S R Sidharth, an engineering student of Indian origin at the University of Virginia, who presided over the US Senate when the votes for the final passage of the deal were being counted. While campaigning for Virginia seat, Allen had called Sidharth, a volunteer for Democratic rival Jim Webb, a “macaca”, a racist slur. The resulting uproar cost Allen his seat. To be fair, Allen has been a proponent of the deal. He said, “I rise in strong support of the deal. We must realise that India’s nuclear weapons are for self-defence, and that India has no record of nuclear proliferation.”

US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will visit India in December to start the final rounds of negotiations on the deal.

Burns will meet with key government officials in India after the US Congress agrees on a unified bill that will later become law.