By Nilotpal Basu
Economics and finance tend to manifest in the political process. However, what we are witnessing right now is an extraordinary level of convergence in the contemporary landscape. A deeper exploration reveals that this is more than a mere coincidence.
For quite some time now there has been a lot of discussion on the spectacular levels of inequality of wealth and income in India. The acute concentration of wealth in a few hands is not a consequence of natural laws of capitalist development. It is distinctly symptomatic of a close nexus between a handful of corporates and the Indian state. Much as we are talking about the Hindutva Rashtra, the fact remains that the close dovetailing of the Indian state pushing the interests of a select few corporates is weaponising them to emerge as what is recognised as financial oligarchies. In fact, so vicious is the domination of these oligarchies in policy making that India is approximating what is often described as corporatocracy, as distinct from the secular democratic republic that our Constitution had sought to establish and nurture. The Republic was in keeping with the characteristics of our anti-imperialist freedom struggle.
The Adani group has unquestionably emerged as a prime driver and beneficiary of this process. Very recently, a report in a section of the media revealed that since 2024, when the Indian government resumed long term coal purchase agreements, the Adani group has won government contracts that will earn it revenue of more than Rs. 13.27 lakh crores over the next twenty five years. Not surprisingly, all but one of these power purchase contracts were won from states governed by the BJP. Between March 2024 and January 2026, twelve such long terms contracts have been auctioned. Eight of them were by the states governed by the BJP.
The Adani group won all of them either on its own or as one among the multiple awardees. Documents underlined that in these BJP ruled states conditions of the tender were tweaked to advantage the Adani group. The estimated Rs. 13.27 lakh crores revenue from these contracts is based on the tariff announced for each power purchase contract and period of the respective contracts. Pertinently, these contracts are for two decades, tying the states to a twenty-yearlong power production trajectory based on coal fired plants, limiting the options of the technology and feedstock regime in a rapidly changing energy scenario.
In recent times, the ceiling on handing out storage space for public grain stocks was waived to facilitate entry of warehouses and silos owned, managed and controlled by the Adani group again, to the tune of more than 60 per cent of the total storage capacity. Sector after sector, from ports to airports and now most importantly energy and media is seeing the clear emergence of the Adanis. In the past, in the pages of People’s Democracy, we have outlined how the rise of the Adani group can be traced to the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi and the BJP in political sphere, starting with the organisation of the events related to the ‘Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit’.
This trajectory necessitates the diverse political reality to be brought under a straitjacket with the illegality of a bulldozer action. The current spurt of new mergers and acquisitions from the ranks of the opposition has assumed the momentum of a hurricane. This has been facilitated by the outcome of the recently concluded Assembly elections.
In the run up to the 2024 General Elections, the BJP had pitched for 400 seats in the Lok Sabha. But having failed to reach even 300 together with its allies, the RSS-BJP is not deterred. Mergers and acquisitions, very much a corporate phenomenon is being replicated in the political space with gusto.
The progress of corporates, in particular the Adanis, is intimately linked with the BJP’s stranglehold over the political process. It can escape nobody’s attention if not actual scrutiny, that concentration of wealth and concentration of political hegemony are concentric.
The numbers game in the Parliament is also prompted by the need to continue this process of establishing hegemony in perpetuity. Therefore, subversion of the Election Commission of India to suit the interests of the BJP is not merely incidental, but deeply interconnected. The chosen instrument for handpicking the electorate based on socio-political and religious denominations dovetails with the Hindutva world view. Juxtaposing this process with the new initiative of establishing a National Demographic Mission based on a fictional narrative about India being swarmed by infiltrators further substantiates this impending threat.
Having said that, there are indeed shortcomings in the internal structures of parties. Some of them, like the TMC, maybe themselves guilty of poaching other parties. But that cannot belittle the danger of the RSS-BJP’s centralising overreach.
It is necessary to also underline the huge threat inherent in such a process to the notion of democracy itself. For democracy to survive, multiplicity of parties and ensuring political choice to the citizens is necessary. It is for this that, though there was overwhelming domination of one party in the national movement, the Constituent Assembly went ahead to construct an infrastructure and edifice for a political system which would ensure level a playing field. With this new trend where the ECI decides on who is going to vote, with utter disregard to the constitutional right of universal adult suffrage, the notion of giving a go-by to defection through these sinister mergers and acquisitions is the new face that the political process has come to assume.
Therefore, far from responding to each one of these processes sporadically, a broad-based platform of resistance to this sinister campaign of corporate Hindutva must be evolved. This platform should not only include political parties who are threatened by this. Organisations, groups and individuals who cherish our secular democratic republic must come together. Different sections of the society are already on the streets, responding to the manifestation of this centralising tendency, with the students protesting or the workers raising the banner of revolt. The fight back has to be at multiple levels, economic, social, political and ideological. No ruler in history has managed to survive the might of the people united. (IPA Service)
