Rahul 'Richard' Verma is chief national security affairs advisor to Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the US Senate who will take over as Majority Leader in January. This would make Verma the most influential Indian- American Congressional staffer on Capitol Hill.

Verma believes the enabling legislation to facilitate the US-India civilian nuclear agreement that was approved in the House and Senate by overwhelming margins thanks to the lobbying efforts of the Indian-American community, can be a major case study  "of the effectiveness of some of the Indian American groups," that were part of the coalition of this campaign.

Verma, who was a catalyst in advising Reid on strategies to move the bill on the Senate floor, headlining one of the panels at the IAFPE convention where the theme was 'Building a Politically Effective Community,' said it "would be useful to do a past, the present and the future, as to where we've been and where we currently are using the India bill, and where we think we are headed in the future with regard to how the Indian-American community is being effective in its relations with the federal officials, specifically with Congress."

He said the community had come a long way because it was beginning to stay united.

Verma recalled going to a meeting at the Indian embassy years ago where there were about 50 people in the room and 50 presidents of organisations there.

"We had a hard time figuring out what organisation we want to be a part of and what issues was it that we wanted to really push before Congress primarily or the executive branch. It was hard to find that unifying issue." The upshot was a great many receptions were held on the Hill that produced no results.

"We did not hold members of Congress accountable. We were a mile wide and an inch deep. We really didn't dig into the issues -- the way it's required to get things done, the way the Jewish community does with regard to Israeli security, or the way some Latin American groups do with regard to immigration," he said, adding that there were few groups that pressed the President or the State Department to act on behalf of India.

The nuclear deal, he said, was "a unifying issue," the likes of which the Indian-American community had never seen before.

"This was the glue that would bind us all together. It was really not about selling nuclear technology or parts to India -- that is what the legislation does. But the bill became much bigger than that. It became about transforming the US-India relationship. It became about how we are going to view this growing giant democracy with which we don't have the kind of relationship we should have. And members of the community started recognising that this as our issue," he said.
Verma said this became all about "changing the dynamics between the two countries," and noted how the Indian embassy then realised what a potent force the community was and began to provide "excellent cooperation and actually reached out to the groups because they knew they would need all of your help."

"We got into the trenches on this legislation. We were not a mile wide and an inch deep on this legislation," and pointed out that perhaps for the first time the community was so informed on the issue that most community activists "knew more about this bill than most members of Congress and most staff people, not only in substance but the process."

Verma declared "it was incredible to see the level of engagement. Not only did they know about it, they knew the bill had weaknesses -- this was not a perfect piece of legislation -- and these guys had to take those issues on directly."
He said to the credit of these activists "they didn't try to paper over them and that was such a big help. These guys also hit the administration very hard -- they hit the National Security Council, the State Department. We had pressure from all sides."

Verma said "the question for all of us is what does the future hold for us. We've got to find some way to keep this momentum going into the future. We have to encourage our second and third generation that public service is OK. It's not for other people anymore because the power and the ability to influence our future rest in these professions of public service and diplomacy."

He asserted that "we need a lot more than one member of Congress. We need some Senators, we need some federal judges. Why can't we have an Indian American in the cabinet in 2008? We shouldn't half-settle any more. There are more than two million of us and we are making incredible gains and incredible strides. We should not settle for anything less," he said.

Ramesh Kapur, a long-time Democratic Party activist who was part of the coalition that campaigned aggressively for the deal, calling in all of his IOUs with the Democratic lawmakers he had raised funds for in the past two decades, including Senator John F Kerry. He spoke of the rationale behind his forming the US-India Security Leadership Council and roping in veterans to support the bill by arguing that the nuclear deal with India was good for America's security too.

Kapur said "as I was going around talking to people on a one-to-one basis, the Congressmen, Senators and their staff were saying they were not hearing about the US-India nuclear deal from anybody other than those in the Indian community. That's what changed the whole dynamics -- and when we got about four million veterans belonging to about 8 to 10 different organizations to come out for the deal and say this is good for national security."

Realising that national security would remain a buzzword as long as Al Qaeda was out there, knowing the Democratic Party was focused on the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the lobbyists tried to get it to consider the issue of national security, seen as the Republican Party's strength.

"Also, at the end of the day," he said, the Democratic leadership decided that the non-proliferation lobby "had become the community of the past and the Indian- American community the community of the future. That's when things started to move -- that's when things started to jell in the Democratic Party from the inside."

Kapur said, the bottom line was that "as with the Jewish community, it was national security that we were able to sell -- that this deal was good for US-India national security. This is what ultimately did it."

Anurag Varma, a partner in a law Washington law firm, who was hired as a counsel to the US-India Friendship Council founded by North Carolina entrepreneur Swadesh Chatterjee to push the nuclear deal legislation through the House and Senate, said, "The lobbying on behalf of this legislation was a snapshot of what we can do."

Varma, legislative counsel to the American Association of Physicians of Indian origin and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, said, "a number of organisations came together and started working together and sharing information and credit. That was one of the biggest obstacles we've had to overcome in the past."

Varma said it was a boon to know about the process because "it is a key part of political education and a key part of becoming politically active. Politics is the ultimate civil service and we have to take that approach always as we did in this case."

Sanjay Puri, founder and president of the US-India Political Action Committee, said USINPAC's strategy of using political capital built over the years was used most effectively in the effort to push the nuclear deal through.

"When there is an issue like the US-India nuclear deal, it is not the time to build relationships. It's the time to make use of the political capital built over the years by the Indian-American community," he said, crediting long-time IAFPE veterans like Chatterjee, Kapur, Sambhu Banik and R D Prabhu for helping amass this political capital.

"We have to have our own seat at the table," Puri said, "otherwise we are not going to be very effective as a political community."

Another panelist, Joe Melookaran, the Kansas chapter president of the Indian American Republican Council, who convinced Senator Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, one of the original co-sponsors of the legislation and a staunch supporter of the deal, said the community had come a long way in the way it lobbied this issue, and in the way it avoided being taken for granted by lawmakers as had happened in the past.

Melookaran, who serves on the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, recalled how lawmakers used to say it was easy to take money from Indian Americans, "because they don't ask for anything in return -- there were no strings attached. All they need is a press release and a picture and they are quite happy."

That was changing now, he said. "We are coming forward and making our presence felt. The nuclear issue was a great issue for the community to rally around," he said, and lauded what he believed was the moving away from "that individual dominance to collective recognition -- because we have big contributors out there and there are a lot of people to take the credit, who don't distribute that credit."

Melookaran asserted that it is imperative to "have that collective recognition to be powerful in front of the elected officials."