Sanjay K. Jha 
Never before in Indian history has the relationship between a prime minister and a businessman dominated the political discourse in the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Gautam Adani have been linked over the past many years. These two have been so inextricably conjoined, at least in public perception, that the opposition parties coined a unique phrase – Modani – to indicate that Modi worked for Adani.
Unseemly slogans like – “Modi-Adani bhai-bhai/Desh bech ke khaye malai” – were heard in Parliament in the 2023 budget session, much before the indictment by an American court that has drawn global attention to Adani group’s unethical ways.
What is surprising is that a shrewd politician like Modi never tried to demolish this perception of personal intimacy with Adani, even as the Congress party persistently made allegations about an unholy nexus since his days as the Gujarat chief minister. The Congress said much before 2014 that Adani was given cheap land in Gujarat for his Special Economic Zone – ranging between Rupee 1 and Rs 32 per square metre – while the corporate house worked across the country to build Modi’s image as a great administrator and reformer.
Rahul Gandhi persisted with this charge, repeating on countless occasions that Modi and Adani are one; and they work to nurture each other’s interests. On February 11, 2021, Rahul said in the Lok Sabha that the country was ruled by four persons – Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, retrofitting the legendary ‘Hum do Hamare do’ slogan that must have burned the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) ears.
Adani was much smaller when Modi became Gujarat’s chief minister in 2001. His rise was not so phenomenal even when Modi became the prime minister, despite allegations of abnormal political patronage. In 2014, Adani’s net worth was $2.8 billion, placed as 11th richest person in India in the Forbe’s list. Amidst political criticism of brazen favouritism, Adani became the second richest person in the world in April 2022, with $90 billion in his kitty.
During this dramatic transformation, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi persistently pointed out, at all his public meetings and press conferences, that Modi was using the prime-ministerial office to enrich his friend Adani both in India and abroad. Gradually, other opposition parties supported the Congress leader, though reluctantly. Other powerful voices like Trinamul Congress’s Mahua Moitra and Aam Aadmi Party’s Sanjay Singh emerged in the later part of the struggle when a US-based short-selling firm Hindenburg Research came out with a damning report, alleging that Adani Group was “pulling the largest con in corporate history.”
But what was Modi government’s response to the chants of “Modani” in political circles?
It refused to allow debates in parliament, opposition leaders’ critical references to their nexus were expunged from records and journalists writing about the shady operations were hounded. The opposition parties alleged that Gandhi and Moitra were disqualified from Lok Sabha primarily because they dared to expose the nexus. The Congress asked a hundred questions on Adani affairs giving specific evidence of wrongdoing and violation of laws but the government ruthlessly stonewalled any investigation.
The demand for a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) was rejected, deepening the suspicion that there was something to hide. Modi made no attempt to respond to the charges; the government neither ordered a fair investigation, nor allowed a debate in Parliament. The investigations going on in certain cases by the central agencies slowed down while Adani’s businesses flourished despite serious allegations.
No prime minister trampled the principle of accountability with such nonchalance. The charges were far too serious to be ignored – Rahul repeatedly said Modi used his office to help Adani expand his business interests in ports, airports, electricity, mining, infrastructure and defence across the globe. He said Modi used India’s diplomatic power to advance Adani’s business interests; projects and contracts for the corporate house followed wherever the Prime Minister Modi went. Before the US, controversies erupted in countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya and Australia but Modi chose to ignore the avalanche of criticism on this front.
It is bewildering that Modi did not have to pay a heavy political price even after a Lankan official deposed before a parliamentary committee, that Modi had pressurised their president to award the wind power project to Adani. In Kenya, where all the contracts now stand cancelled, the government formally conceded that Adani was introduced to them by Modi. In Bangladesh, the electricity transmission contract was widely described as unfair, leading to protests in that country, as well as in Jharkhand where the power plant is set up. The Congress has said that Adani’s defence contract with Israel is also a farce because no manufacturing is being done in India. The case of over-invoicing of coal from Indonesia also created a storm but no investigation was ordered.
What these instances reveal is that the jolt from America hasn’t come out of blue. The charge that vital information was hidden and investors were misled in the US is true for Indian investors as well. A legitimate question arises as to why didn’t the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) scrutinised these violations by the Adani group all these years?
That the government didn’t remove SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch despite a torrent of allegations of wrongdoing against her also gives credence to the charge that a huge network of vested interests exist to facilitate Adani’s operations. The BJP now objects to Modi’s name getting attached to Adani. This happened because there is history; Modi could have demolished this charge of nexus by accepting the demand for a JPC and firming up the law-enforcement infrastructure in the last decade. But he did the opposite; his government altered the norms to grant more than one airport to Adani and brought farm laws attracting allegations of a sinister conspiracy to hand over agriculture trade worth Rs 30 lakh crore to Adani-Ambani. While the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) targeted opposition leaders, they cared not to enquire about the allegations against Adani. Even Modi’s own charge that Adani-Ambani delivered temp-loads of cash to the Congress were not investigated.
It is little wonder then, that we have reached a situation where Adani is seen as an unscrupulous businessman being propped up by the Indian prime minister – an obvious dent on India’s image. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-BJP ecosystem will understand this better because it helped Adani’s dubious attempts to hide behind nationalism when the Hindenburg report exploded.
Gandhi, ridiculed as Pappu, had predicted this on several occasions ion the past. He said in September 2023, answering questions about crony capitalism and monopolies in India at the Sciences Po University in France, “What you are having in India today with Adani is so blatant, and it’s completely so over the top, I don’t think there is any other place this is going on. The gentleman is in pretty much in every single business. As people know, he is sending money out of India, he is manipulating his stock prices and he is using that money to buy Indian assets. It is a big circle. Part of the reason the prime minister got so excited about this Bharat [changing India’s nam] issue is because of the Adani story. Everybody knows it, we know it that there are very close linkages between the Prime Minister and Adani. The documentation is available. And he is not going to get away with it. Eventually, he is going to be held accountable for it.”