India
In India, the corporate capture of the State made front-page headlines in 2023, including attempts to silence philanthropic and civil society organizations. The Adani Group, the country’s most prominent private company, was linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ever since the prime minister used Adani’s corporate jet following his election.
The case of India presents a conundrum for the energy transition: it is at once a world leader in the energy transition, with ambitious new renewable energy targets of “500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030,” and home to the world’s “second-largest new coal pipeline.” While perhaps par for the course — most countries worldwide also practice a tandem approach to energy generation —, India is emblematic of the corporate capture of the State in the energy transition writ large.
On one hand, the Modi government announced “billions in subsidies to manufacture clean-energy technology and wants to become a leading green hydrogen exporter,” creating an enormous target for those seeking to maximize their private interests. On the other hand, Modi’s administration and prominent economic groups, such as Adani, were linked to State capture scandals dating back to when both men began doing business together 20 years ago. Through Adani Green Energy and the Adani Group’s coal companies, respectively, the country’s richest person is an extraordinary beneficiary of government largesse, from subsidies to public contracts. As the “largest private developer of coal power plants and coal mines in the world,” Adani imports and produces domesticallythe largest share of coal used in India.
Insofar as corporate capture, which in India is most often termed political capture due to politicians seeking to gain influence over the State, the challenge is how to reduce States’ dependence on oligarchs, monopolies, and authoritarian leaders and allow democratic economic models to prevail that genuinely favor the renewable energy transition over fossil fuel dependency.
In the Indian case, it appears that tight political control and a limited set of known actors is the preferred model of State capture.