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Narendra Modi will visit Norway next week, 43 years after an Indian prime minister went to this small European country. Close observers of the scene argue that this visit may be linked to the fact that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has excluded Adani Green Energy from its investment universe in February this year because of corruption charges – which the prime minister of India may be in a position to neutralise now that corruption charges against the Adani group have been lifted in the US. This episode offers a good opportunity to review the way this group and the Indian state have helped each other internationally – or not.

Who is the dalal of whom?

In the US in the 1950s, when the CEO of General Motors, Charles Wilson, was appointed secretary of defense, he said there was no conflict of interest in this nomination because he “thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa”. This quote, that was subsequently applied to Exxon too, has now become the symbol of the embeddedness of business and politics in the US. 

In India, this process has gained momentum after 1991 and, subsequently, has taken a more personalised turn with the rise of oligarchs. The most successful of them all is undoubtedly Gautam Adani, who has cultivated a close relationship with Modi for more at least 25 years. 

But has it helped India abroad? 

The question arises because of the Adani group’s growing investments out of India and the fact that, after 2014, Adani accompanied the prime minister on most of his trips abroad for some time. This is further complicated by allegations that during his official visits to foreign countries, Modi laid the groundwork for negotiations that the Adani Group then pursued, often with a view to massive investments.

Also read: ‘Comprised PM Struck Adani Release Bargain’: Opposition on Reports that US May Drop Fraud, Bribery Charges

The group naturally benefited from these projects, but so did the Modi government, as these initiatives created a special (dependent) relationship between the recipient countries and India. This pattern was implemented with particular diligence toward India’s neighbours – who sometimes saw these contracts as a good way to counterbalance China’s presence on their soil and, of course, as vehicles for economic development. 

In Bangladesh, such a scenario unfolded as early as 2015. In June, during an official visit, Modi pledged to help Sheikh Hasina’s government overcome the country’s difficulties in securing electricity supplies. Two months later, the Adani Group and the Bangladesh Power Development Board signed an agreement under which a thermal power plant in Jharkhand would supply Bangladesh with electricity. The project’s implementation was formalised during Hasina’s visit to India in 2017. 

In the case of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa met Modi in New Delhi in February 2020 to discuss debt relief for Sri Lanka’s $60-billion debt burden and sought a $400 million line of credit for development projects. 

The Sri Lankan government had called on the Adani Group to develop the Port of Colombo – thereby somewhat counterbalancing its alignment with China. Local unions refused to allow the contract to cover the East Container Terminal due to its strategic nature (linked to its very large capacity), but Adani secured a majority stake in a 35-year BOT (Build, Operate, and Transfer) agreement for the West Container Terminal. Adani met President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in October 2021........

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