Narendra Modi and Gautam Adani: A Love Affair Extraordinary?
Sukla Sen
Gautam Adani, PM Modi's constant companion on overseas trips
Everywhere that Prime Minister Narendra Modi goes, it seems, Gautam Adani is sure to go.
Everywhere that Prime Minister Narendra Modi goes, it seems, Gautam Adani is sure to go.
The Gujarati businessman and head of the Rs 56,000-crore group is one common thread that runs through the many trips that India’s peripatetic leader has made since assuming office nearly a year ago.
Last week in France, Adani was prominent in the audience at UNESCO where the PM delivered a 20 minute speech; sources say he even met former president Nicolas Sarkozy over dinner. The list of attendees at the Indo-French CEOs meeting given to the media by the French side mentioned his name after Anil Ambani; the Indian side’s list was curiously silent about his participation.
Now Adani, whose interests span infrastructure and power, is in Canada, where Modi is busy discussing energy cooperation, nuclear energy and investments in urbanisation.
Government officials maintained, off the record, that Adani was never a part of any official delegation and as a private individual, he was free to go wherever he wanted. HT’s attempts to reach Adani for this article proved to be in vain.
Adani was a fixture when Modi went to the United States, Australia, Brazil and Japan. In New York, he was frequently spotted going up from the foyer of the New York Palace Hotel to the floor where Modi was staying; he also attended the PM’s address to the United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA).
In November, the otherwise low-key enterpreneur — worth $6.9 billion and ranked 12th on the recent HT Global India Rich List — was seen walking with the PM at various events around the G-20 summit in Australia.
Adani and State Bank of India chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya inked an agreement for a Rs 6,200-crore loan for Adani’s coal project Down Under, which is embroiled in several controversies and now has been challenged in court by some rights groups. Over a dozen top international banks have refused to fund the ambitious project involving coal mining, railway line and a port.
“Gautambhai is known for his proximity with the PM so now he is flaunting it,” said a top bureaucrat who has known Adani for 20 years.
This relationship may be more in the public eye now, but goes back to the days when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat. Adani journeyed to China, Japan, Singapore and Russia with his leader.
In fact, his proximity to Modi was targeted by Rahul Gandhi in some of the Congress leader’s campaign speeches, but the comments were drowned in a saffron wave that swept away everything before it.
Adani’s companies are labouring under a debt of Rs 72,000 crore but this hasn’t stopped him buying two power plants, plus a port in Odisha, after the change in regime in Delhi.
And the day Modi’s landslide in the general elections win was announced — May 16 last year —Adani celebrated the acquisition of Dhamra Port from Larsen and Toubro and Tata Steel for Rs 5,500 crore after nearly a year of negotiations.
From 2014 to 2019: How the Adani Group’s footprint expanded across India
Not only is the conglomerate growing at a time when other infrastructure companies are shedding assets, it is growing despite relatively small profits.
In September and October 2018, the Modi government awarded 126 contracts to firms to set up and operate piped natural gas networks and fuel stations across India.
These bids were notable for three reasons. First, the number of contracts given out in these two months was significantly higher than those given in the previous nine years – 35 contracts under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, and 63 contracts under the Modi government until then.
Second, the government put these contracts up for bidding even though the networks for transporting gas to these cities and districts are still not in place. By March 2017, India had laid 17,753 km of pipeline for natural gas. An executive tracking these auctions at Swan Energy, a company in the natural gas sector, said another 13,000 km of pipeline is needed before gas can be supplied to the new areas.
Though these bids have been evaluated on factors like the number of houses and vehicles that bidders will convert to piped gas in the first five years, the bidding has been done without clarity on when gas will reach these areas and at what price.
The largest winner of the bids was Gujarat-based Adani Group. In a bidding process that saw 23 participants for 126 tenders, the group won 25 bids – 15 on its own and 10 in a joint venture with government-owned Indian Oil Corporation. Other companies bagged fewer contracts.
A dizzying burst of growth
These gas contracts are part of a larger pattern of growth for the Gautam Adani-led infrastructure conglomerate. One part of the expansion has come through acquisitions.
In 2018, apart from winning the gas bids, it acquired Reliance Power’s electricity transmission business in Mumbai, GMR’s thermal power project in Chhattisgarh, Larsen and Toubro’s Katupalli port near Chennai, and a power transmission line owned by KEC International in Rajasthan. The group also bid for 51% in a power project owned by Tamil Nadu-based Coastal Energen, which is still undecided, and came close to buying Ruchi Soya.
Indian tycoon Gautam Adani named world’s third richest person
Billionaire becomes first Asian person to break into the top three of world’s wealthy
The Indian tycoon Gautam Adani has been named the world’s third richest person with an estimated $137bn (£117bn) fortune and becomes the first Asian person to break into the top three of world’s wealthy.
Adani, 60, who founded the mining-to-energy conglomerate Adani Group after dropping out of university, was on Tuesday ranked third on the daily-updated Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His wealth has soared by $61bn so far this year, according to the index, as the market value of many of his companies have grown. Many of his businesses are involved in natural gas, coal mining and electricity generation, and are likely to have benefited from the global energy price increase.
Adani took the third spot after leapfrogging Bernard Arnault, the French billionaire who owns most of the luxury brand portfolio LVMH. Arnault’s fortune has slipped by $42bn so far this year to $136bn.
All of the billionaires in the top 10 except Adani have experienced falls in their wealth this year – after making massive gains during the Covid crisis.
The only people richer than Adani are Tesla boss Elon Musk with an estimated $251bn fortune and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with $153bn.
Adani’s conglomerate owns India’s largest private sector seaport and airport operator as well as a huge coalmine in Queensland, Australia. The company has faced fierce criticism for its environmental impact on the Great Barrier Reef as well as its use of billions of litres of water a year.
Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish environmentalist, has been among those campaigning against the Carmichael coalmine.
Last year it promised to invest $70bn in green energy and become the world’s largest renewables producer.
Some critics suggest Adani has benefited financially from his close relationship with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.
When six Indian airports were lined up for privatisation on 2018, Modi relaxed the rules to allow companies with no experience in running airports to bid for them. Adani’s company bought all six and became the country’s biggest airport operator.
The Kerala state finance minister, Thomas Isaac, described it as an “act of brazen cronyism”.
After Modi’s 2014 election victory, Adani lent the prime minister-elect his private jet for a victory tour. Adani’s wealth has risen from an estimated $8bn at the time of Modi’s election in 2014 to $137bn today, a rise of more than 1,600%.
Last week, Adani increased his influence by buying a 29% stake in television network New Delhi Television (NDTV), which is seen as one of few remaining independent TV channels in India.
NDTV said Adani acquired his stake via a third party without informing the company’s co-founders and co-chairs, Radhika Roy, a former journalist, and her husband, Prannoy Roy, a well-known economist.
The company said the deal, which includes a proposal to buy a further 26% stake, was done “without discussion, consent or notice”.
“NDTV has never compromised on the heart of its operations: its journalism,” the company said. “We continue to proudly stand by that journalism.”
AMG Media Networks Limited (AMNL), the media part of Adani’s empire, said the takeover was “a significant milestone in the journey of AMNL’s goal to pave the path of new age media across platforms”.
“AMNL seeks to empower Indian citizens, consumers and those interested in India, with information and knowledge,” the AMNL chief executive, Sanjay Pugalia, said.
On his website, Adani is described as “a first-generation entrepreneur [who] is driven by the core philosophy of infusing ‘growth with goodness’ through his vision of nation-building”.
“For Mr Adani, nation-building means transforming India’s coastline by building a string of ports and logistics hubs,” it says. “For him, nation-building also means strengthening the country’s energy security and mitigating the urban-rural divide by delivering electricity to several hundreds of millions living in the hinterlands of India.
“Nation-building, for Mr Adani, also involves boosting food security by building a modern agriculture supply chain and empowering the farmers. Each of his industrial endeavours has created tens of thousands of jobs.”
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