Corporate Behaviour and Free Speech

‘Gross environmental mismanagement’: Adani’s Udupi coal-power plant fined over US $6 million Ayaskant Das Jun 24, 2022  https://www.adaniwatch.org/_gross_environmental_mismanagement_adani_s_udupi_coal_power_plant_penalised  India’s premier environmental court says the Udupi power plant has polluted local fields and villages with emissions, coal dust, fly ash and wastewater. Inhabitants have suffered respiratory diseases and impacts on their livelihoods due to loss of agricultural productivity. Will the Adani company pay the fine or will it launch a protracted set of appeals? 

The Adani Group purchased the 2X600 Mega Watt (MW) power plant in April 2015 from the Indian business conglomerate Lanco Infratech which had been the largest private electricity supplier in the country.

Adani's Talabira coal mine: Communities resist being displaced for the second time in 70 years https://www.adaniwatch.org/talabira_project_story_3 Ayaskant Das Jun 01, 2022 In the Indian state of Odisha, hundreds of families are resisting dispossession and displacement by a sprawling coal mine. The Talabira II and III project is being developed by an Adani company. Many of the people in the path of the rapidly expanding excavations live in a state of anxiety because they have yet to be offered adequate compensation. 

‘Modi’s Rockefeller’: Gautam Adani and the concentration of power in India Financial Times  NOVEMBER 13 2020  https://www.ft.com/content/474706d6-1243-4f1e-b365-891d4c5d528b 

Since Mr Modi came into office, Mr Adani’s net worth has increased by about 230 per cent to more than $26bn as he won government tenders and built infrastructure projects across the country.

But as New Delhi accelerates its privatisation drive to offset the severe economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Adani’s mushrooming empire has become a focus of criticism for those who believe that capital is being concentrated in the hands of a few favoured corporate titans at the expense of India’s middle class.

Some argue the concentration of economic power in family-run conglomerates is a way to fast-track India’s economic development, like the chaebol did for postwar South Korea. But critics say the rapid consolidation of state assets is creating monopolies and stifling competition.

“Is India going to move towards the east Asian model or the Russian model? So far the tendency looks towards the latter [more] than the former,” says Rohit Chandra, assistant professor of public policy at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. “It’s not clear whether India’s concentration of capital will lead to the long-term benefit of Indian consumers.”