Over the past two decades, Indian multi-billionaire Gautam Adani's close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi have helped the Gujarati businessman become Asia's wealthiest person. Mr Adani's meteoric rise also made him the poster boy for India's growth story -- until allegations of fraud and stock manipulation brought his eponymous business empire to its knees. With his conglomerate losing US$110 billion in market value within days, Mr Adani has become a cautionary tale about the perils of cronyism in Mr Modi's India.
The partnership between Mr Adani and Mr Modi goes back to 2002, when Mr Modi -- then Chief Minister of Gujarat -- faced heavy criticism for failing to contain anti-Muslim mobs that killed more than a thousand people in the state. Following the massacre, Mr Modi was barred from entering the United States and largely abandoned by India's business leaders. Mr Adani, who continued to support Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was handsomely rewarded for his loyalty. Over the next decade, the Adani group grew at breakneck speed, winning multiple state government contracts and expanding into food imports and exports, coal trading and mining, power, oil and gas exploration, and infrastructure.
Over the years, the relationship became increasingly symbiotic. When Mr Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, he flew to Delhi on Mr Adani's private jet. Again and again, the government relaxed regulations or amended rules in ways that benefited Mr Adani's businesses. In 2017, for example, the government designated Mr Adani's power plant in Godda a special economic zone, allegedly tweaking the rules to give the group a ₹5 billion (about two billion baht) bonanza. In 2019, Mr Modi's government handed Mr Adani the rights to operate six newly privatised airports, despite the company's utter lack of experience in the sector.
