How Gautam Adani Became ‘the Story’ for the Media

We are seeing the confluence of money, political power and media presence,  where each contributes to reinforcing the reach of the other

Pamela Philipose

Watching Gautam Adani seated on the witness box during Rajat Sharma’s ‘AapkiAdalat’ on January 7 was to immediately recall a similar performance, in a similar setting, staged by his political benefactor, Prime Minister NarendraModi, nine years earlier on April 12, 2014.

Set amidst fawning, cheering, clapping audiences, both televised extravaganzas were in their different ways branding exercises. In the Modi instance, it was literally the crowning of a prime ministerial aspirant as prime minister, even before the country had voted.

In the Adani case, it was anointing a business man with a personal net worth of $150 billion as the country’s very own Midas. Taken together they represent the confluence of money, political power and media presence, where each contributes to reinforcing the reach of the other. What is your hidden formula, Rajat Sharma asked Adani.

His reply was delivered with a straight face, “Mehnat, mehnat, mehnat (hard work, hard work, hard work).” As one Twitter user put it, the answer should rightly have been “Modi, Modi, Modi,” because the Modi years in power have seen Adani’s wealth rise by over 15 times.

In fact, if this arrangement was to be given a name, it should rightly be termed media-infused crony capitalism. Some years ago, communications professor and author Robert McChesney, along with his colleague John Nichols, came up with a word to characterise the political economy of the US: ‘Dollarocracy’ – “the rule of money rather than the rule of people”.

The time has come it seems for us to recognise India as a ‘Rupeeocracy’, where you have democracy in form but not in substance; where you have an impressive line of media institutions but no journalism; where a phenomenon that could be termed ‘Ambdani’ – or media captured by two of the richest corporate houses in the country – looks set to drain out the media pond, modest though it has always been.

Political thinker, JairusBanaji, in a recent piece titled ‘Indian Big Business’ makes an interesting classification of Indian businesses today: Large Business Houses (of the traditional type); First wave post-1947 entities; those who consolidated themselves in the 1950s-70s; and finally a group he terms as ‘New Capitalists’.

The last category, Banaji posits, are the “most fervent supporters of Prime Minister Modi”, and include the Ambanis, Adani, Sunil Mittal (Airtel), Anil Agarwal (Vedanta), the Hindujas, and Sudhir Mehta of the Torrent Group, as well as some smaller ones like the businesses of media tycoon Subhash Chandra.

The connection includes political funding through electoral bonds. This group has seen their total debt level jump five times over the last half decade to account for 13% of all bank loans in the country. In fact, “all banks appear to have high exposure to the same few groups.”

What this constitutes, Banaji observes, is a political economy that allows some capitalists to move far ahead of the others by leveraging their influence with decisionmakers. It is precisely here that media holdings by such corporates can play an invaluable role. They help to amplify and aggregate presence and influence policy.

In 2014, MukeshAmbani discovered this when he was formally anointed a media mogul after acquiring RaghavBahl’s Network 18 Media and Investments Ltd for Rs. 4,000-crore. In 2022, GautamAdani followed, coming to own three national channels by virtue of having acquired a 64.72% stake in NDTV.

As Ravish Kumar, former senior executive editor of NDTV India, who resigned from his post soon after the Adani acquisition move was made public, sees this as the coming together of the ‘godi media’ (media perched on the lap of power wielders) and the ‘godiseth’ (corporates close to the government).

So how does a man, the world’s coal king, view his recent acquisition of NDTV? In his interview with India Today Television, Adani swore that he will not interfere with its operations: “On editorial independence, NDTV will be a credible, independent, global network with a lakshmanrekha between the management and editorial.”

He then went on to counsel patience on the part of sceptics. Give us some time, he said, because the “proof of the pudding is in the eating.” It did not take long before the pudding revealed its true ingredients.

The timeline is telling. The India Today piece was written on December 27. By December 30, Adani Group announced its majority stake in NDTV. On Janua