Skip to main content

Corporate-political party nexus? Rise and rise of Gautam Adani under Modi regime

By Sandeep Pandey* 
In last five years Rs 10,09,510 crore taken as loans by various companies from banks in India have been declared as Non Performing Assets, an euphemism for writing them off. Out of this State Bank of India alone wrote off Rs 2,04,486 crore. Only about 13% of the total written off amount was recovered.
Identity of the defaulting borrowers, most of whom are influential corporates, is not revealed. Compare this to the loans taken by farmers. The names of defaulting farmers is displayed on walls in tehsil offices to shame them and some unlucky ones also land up in lock-ups there. On the contrary, a few corporate defaulters have fled the country and quite curiously the authorities didn’t seize their passports like they do with some dissenting intellectuals or activists booked under mostly false cases.
Now consider the donations received by political parties in the form of electoral bonds. The identity of the donor need not be revealed even to the Election Commission or income tax department. The Bhartiya Janata Party has received a total of Rs 4,028 crore, since the scheme was introduced in 2018 till end of financial year 2020-21, which is 63% of its total income and 92% of its income from unknown sources.
The Congress Party has received Rs 731 crore in the form of electoral bonds in the same period, which gives an idea of why it is not so much against this opaque system of donations. So far Rs 10,791.47 crore worth of electoral bonds have been sold by SBI.
Till the end of financial year 202-21, BJP’s share in income from electoral bonds received by all national political parties was 80% and was 65% of income of all national and regional parties. Quite clearly BJP is the biggest beneficiary of the opaque donations through electoral bonds and it is receiving almost two thirds of its donations through this means.
Could there be a relation between keeping the identity of companies whose loans are written off concealed and not disclosing the names of companies making donations through electoral bonds? In reply to a Right to Information query by Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd) it is revealed that 93.67% electoral bonds sold were of denomination Rs. 1 crore, the biggest available.
Hence most probably it is the big corporates, quite a few of them could be multinational ones, who are buying these and it points to a deep corporate-political party nexus which is bad for policy making in the interest of common people of this country, specifically, and for the democracy, in general.
The suspicion arises as unlike before when companies could only give up to 7.5% of their average profit over last three years as political donations, since 2018 when electoral bond system was introduced this restriction has been removed. This implies that even loss making companies can now make political donations.
A company whose loans are being written off is most likely a loss making company, a possible reason why it cannot repay the amount borrowed. Is it possible that some of the loans taken from banks are being routed to political parties as donations and then these loans are being written off in a quid pro quo arrangement?
We will never know this because of the opaque nature of functioning of the system which has got itself immunity from the RTI regime as well. The electoral bond system as well as declaration of NPAs system stand in stark contrast to the spirit of transparency being sought to be brought in the governance system of this country since 2005 as part of the RTI Act. Without the help of RTI, corporate-political party nexus can never be exposed.
This explains another anomaly introduced in the system – the RTI Act has been made toothless by an amendment in 2019. Otherwise, during the United Progressive Alliance government, Central Information Commission had even passed an order for the political parties to reveal details about their donations under the Act.
It is an open secret, in spite of the opaque system, that Gautam Adani has been the biggest beneficiary of the National Democratic Alliance government. Even Narendra Modi doesn’t make an attempt to hide this. As Chief Minister of Gujarat when he flew to New Delhi to take oath as Prime Minister of the country he chose to use Adani’s aircraft.
Adani, who was not much known outside Gujarat before Modi’s ascension to power at the Centre, is now the second richest man in the world. For the first time a PM’s photo has appeared in advertisements of private companies like Reliance Jio and Paytm. Narendra Modi also inaugurated private hospital of Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai in 2014.
The Union government approved grants of Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 1,500 crore to Adar Poonawalla’s company and Bharat Biotech, the two chosen ones, for Covid-19 vaccine production. Hence it is only a matter of conjecture who the biggest electoral bond donors to BJP would be?
On the other hand, even though he would like to project himself as a mendicant, Narendra Modi’s opulence is visible. People don’t miss the number of times he changes dress during the course of a day. Each of them is designed to give a fashion statement. The costly coat that he wore in 2015 with his name inscribed all over fetched Rs 1.21 crore in auction.
Modi may declare himself to be honest man like Dr Manmohan Singh, with no personal wealth in his name, but unlike the former PM, how do we know that the assets being created by his good friend Adani are not ‘benami'?
---
*Magsaysay award winning academic-social activist, general secretary of Socialist Party (India)

Comments

Post a Comment

TRENDING

Modi’s Israel visit strengthened Pakistan’s hand in US–Iran truce: Ex-Indian diplomat

By Jag Jivan   M. K. Bhadrakumar , a career diplomat with three decades of service in postings across the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey, has warned that the current truce in the US–Iran war is “fragile and ridden with contradictions.” Writing in his blog India Punchline , Bhadrakumar argues that while Pakistan has emerged as a surprising broker of dialogue, the durability of the ceasefire remains uncertain.
Post a Comment
»

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”
Post a Comment
»

Why Indo-Pak relations have been on 'knife’s edge' , hostilities may remain for long

By Utkarsh Bajpai*  The past few decades have seen strides being made in all aspects of life – from sticks and stones to weaponry. The extreme case of this phenomenon has been nuclear weapons. The menace caused by nuclear weapons in the past is unforgettable. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 come to mind, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities.
Post a Comment
»

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.
Post a Comment
»

Food security? Gujarat govt puts more than 5 lakh ration cards in the 'silent' category

By Pankti Jog* A new statistical report uploaded by the Gujarat government on the national food security portal shows that ensuring food security for the marginalized community is still not a priority of the state. The statistical report, uploaded on December 24, highlights many weaknesses in implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in state.
Post a Comment
»

The soundtrack of resistance: How 'Sada Sada Ya Nabi' is fueling the Iran war

​ By Syed Ali Mujtaba*  ​The Persian track “ Sada Sada Ya Nabi ye ” by Hossein Sotoodeh has taken the world by storm. This viral media has cut across linguistic barriers to achieve cult status, reaching over 10 million views. The electrifying music and passionate rendition by the Iranian singer have resonated across the globe, particularly as the high-intensity military conflict involving Iran entered its second month in March 2026.
Post a Comment
»

Lata Mangeshkar, a Dalit from Devdasi family, 'refused to sing a song' about Ambedkar

By Pramod Ranjan*  An artist is known and respected for her art. But she is equally, or even more so known and respected for her social concerns. An artist's social concerns or in other words, her worldview, give a direction and purpose to her art. History remembers only such artists whose social concerns are deep, reasoned and of durable importance. Lata Mangeshkar (28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was a celebrated playback singer of the Hindi film industry. She was the uncrowned queen of Indian music for over seven decades. Her popularity was unmatched. Her songs were heard and admired not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other South Asian countries. In this article, we will focus on her social concerns. Lata lived for 92 long years. Music ran in her blood. Her father also belonged to the world of music. Her two sisters, Asha Bhonsle and Usha Mangeshkar, are well-known singers. Lata might have been born in Indore but the blood of a famous Devdasi family...
2 comments
»

'Batteries now cheap enough for solar to meet India's 90% demand': Expert quotes Ember study

By A Representative   Shankar Sharma, Power & Climate Policy Analyst, has urged India’s top policymakers to reconsider the financial and ecological implications of the country’s energy transition strategy in light of recent global developments. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, addressed to the Union Ministers of Finance, Power, New & Renewable Energy, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and the Vice Chair of NITI Aayog, with a copy to the Prime Minister, Sharma highlighted concerns over India’s ambitious plans for coal gasification and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).
Post a Comment
»

Health Day ads spark row as NAPi targets Britannia campaign, criticizes celebrity endorsement

By A Representative   The advocacy group Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi) has raised concerns over what it describes as misleading advertising of ultra-processed food products (UPFs), particularly those high in sugar, fat and salt, calling for stricter regulations and an end to such promotions across media platforms.
Post a Comment
»