'So you are that Kakodkar. Are you happy?'

"So you are that Kakodkar. Are you happy?" This was George W Bush's reaction to nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar when he was introduced to the visiting United States President in March 2006 when the Indo-US nuclear deal was being finalised.

Kakodkar, the then Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India and Department of Atomic Energy Secretary, was perceived to be a difficult nut to crack by the negotiators from the US side as he insisted on leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that India's nuclear programme does not suffer due to the deal. At the height of negotiations, he was even described as a "600 pound gorilla who spoke logic but wouldn't budge".

In a new book 'Fire and Fury: Transforming India's Strategic Identity', Kakodkar recalls the hectic negotiations with the US and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) among others, opposition from senior nuclear scientists and other developments. The book is co-authored by Senior Technical Advisor to Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Suresh Gangotra, who also worked with Kakodkar.

Kakodkar, who had done sundry jobs like distributing leaflets house to house to support his mother during his college days, says that the negotiations had once entered rough weather following differences on the contours of the key Separation Plan of civilian and military nuclear facilities.

Two days before Bush's arrival, the US team was in New Delhi to finalise the text of the Separation Plan and both the sides were negotiating in South Block till 2 AM on the night before the US President was reaching.

“Firmness paid off. The US team conceded to our demands. The next morning, there was the formal meeting at Hyderabad House (in Delhi). By that time, I was already perceived to be a difficult nut to crack,” he writes.

“When I was introduced to President Bush, he asked, So, you are that Kakodkar. Are you happy? I replied in the affirmative,” he adds.

Before this, he recalls, a meeting he had with the US-India Business Council (USIBC), which was among the lobbies working for early finalisation of the deal. He was keeping a "safe distance" from them but met the USIBC team, which was "unable to understand why I was taking a negative stand on demands that were being made for inclusion in the Separation Plan".

Kakodkar told them that developing Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors was not the end of India's atomic energy programme and there were "many more new technologies, not existing anywhere, particularly in context of our long-term interests in thorium, that had to be developed".

"I could not be doing that with the IAEA inspectors breathing down my neck. When we were doing something new, we would naturally need mid-course corrections. Something would work. Something would not. If we were under IAEA safeguards and made even a small deviation, we would be accused of doing something that was not in the agreed Plan. R&D can never be done like that," he told the USIBC team, which "agreed with what I said".