The Adani saga will leave India strategically vulnerable on the global stage

In 2022, when Sri Lanka was ruled by the now deposed authoritarian president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, he roped in Adani Green to invest $442 million in a wind power project in Mannar and Pooneryn, in the north of the country. A few months later, a top Ceylon Electricity Board official told a parliamentary panel in Colombo that the 20-year agreement was approved after Prime Minister Narendra Modi “pressured” Rajapaksa to do so. The official subsequently withdrew his statement and resigned. Despite questions from various quarters, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who replaced Rajapaksa, continued to back the project. In 2023, Ali Sabry, who was then Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, proclaimed that Colombo was “very, very confident” of the future of the project since it considered the Adani contract a “government-to-government” deal with New Delhi.

Sabry may have based his characterisation on the strength of the backing Adani was able to demonstrate. Under Modi, promoting private business interests has been fashioned as a key component of India’s foreign policy. Adani’s companies have been the biggest beneficiaries in this regime, despite numerous allegations of corruption, in India and abroad, against the Indian corporate giant. The most damning one yet is the recent indictment by a New York court. The US Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission accused Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and six associates, of lying to American investors about their business practices between 2020 and 2024. Adani and his associates assured investors that they followed the law even as they conspired to bribe Indian officials with $265 million in payments.

Over the past decade, Modi has been called out for his proximity to Adani, including by the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, but the Indian prime minister has neither done anything to counter this view nor has he expanded the list of corporate groups to further India’s geopolitical goals. By putting all his eggs in one basket, Modi has helped create an impression that Adani is a proxy for his regime. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and union ministers were the staunchest defenders of Adani after the indictment, reinforcing the impression that he is an integral part of Modi’s Hindutva regime.

In Colombo, Adani’s involvement in key infrastructure projects had even become an electoral issue. Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake referred to the wind-power project during his successful presidential campaign. He said in a chat show, “Yes. We will definitely cancel it Adani’s wind power project as it threatens our energy sovereignty.” After he became president, the government said it would “review” the project after the parliamentary polls, with Dissanayake even declaring they would investigate the previous government’s “corrupt Adani deals.” Adani’s other major investment in the island country, announced a few months before the wind-power project and seen as a counter to Chinese investment, was the container-terminal project in Colombo. In November 2023, the United States International Development Finance Corporation announced a $553-million investment in the project, a  $700-million joint venture among Adani Ports, Sri Lanka Ports Authority, and Sri Lankan corporate John Keells Holdings.