The day after his 2014 election victory, Narendra Modi was filmed on board a private jet owned by business magnate Gautam Adani, already one of India’s richest men. One side of the cabin was decorated in the saffron, white and green of the Indian flag, the other in the colours of the Adani group. The mutual attraction of money and power is hardly news but the relationship between these two men – one the figurehead of Hindu supremacism, the other of accumulating wealth – has been solid for two decades, a symbol of crony capitalism on a scale unprecedented in India’s history.

Adani dropped out of college, left his native Gujarat for Mumbai, and took a job in the diamond industry sorting stones. A year later he came home to help his brother launch a plastic film manufacturing business. The firm grew so large they started importing raw materials. In 1988 they founded Adani Exports and diversified into food product storage, power generation, cement manufacturing and steelmaking. Ten years later, Adani laid the foundations of his business empire by building a private port at Mundra, on India’s Arabian Sea coast, on a site of nearly 3,600 hectares, partly covered by forest and pasture.

Modi’s relationship with Adani began in 2002, after the pogrom in Gujarat, in which Hindu extremists killed some 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, with the connivance of Modi, then the state’s chief minister. Some members of the Confederation of Indian Industry called for Modi’s resignation. Others decided to support him and founded a new organisation, the Resurgent Group of Gujarat (RGG), with Adani, then 40, as its leader.

In 2003 Adani attracted attention at the first Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, a biennial investment business event, by promising Modi 15bn rupees (around $180m) of investment. Modi returned the favour by facilitating the expansion of Mundra, now India’s largest private port. According to Forbes Asia, which has analysed the original contracts, Adani has over (…)

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