‘Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.’ (Honoré de Balzac)
IN the 1963 classic film The Great Escape, Allied prisoners of war tunnel painstakingly beneath Nazi confinement, risking torture and death for a desperate chance at freedom. The escape is heroic precisely because the fugitives are hunted. Every breath outside captivity carries danger. Every step forward risks capture.
In another famous cinematic tradition, from gangland dramas to political thrillers, fugitives flee across borders with forged identities, safe houses, hidden money, and constant fear at their heels. The powerful may escape temporarily, but they remain haunted by exposure. Justice, even if delayed, pursues them like a shadow.
But modern oligarchic capitalism has invented a different kind of escape altogether.
There are now men so politically connected, so economically indispensable, and so deeply embedded within state power that they do not need to hide. They escape openly. They travel freely. They are welcomed at investment summits, photographed beside heads of government, protected by institutions, defended by media ecosystems, and celebrated as symbols of national greatness even while grave allegations swirl around them.
No disguises.
No tunnels.
No fear.
Only privilege.
Across much of the world, democracies are increasingly confronted by a dangerous convergence: immense private wealth acquiring extraordinary public influence. Elections continue, institutions formally survive, and constitutions remain intact, yet power begins to migrate away from citizens toward tightly connected networks of corporations, financiers, media structures, and political elites.
Few figures embody this phenomenon more dramatically than Gautam Adani. In ordinary democracies, bribery and fraud invite prosecution. In today’s India and the United States, they can also bring power, privilege, and protection.
The unfolding scandal surrounding the Adani Group is no longer merely a story about corporate misconduct or allegations of bribery. It has become a disturbing mirror reflecting the deeper transformation of the Indian republic itself — a transformation in which political power, corporate wealth, institutional weakness, and aggressive nationalism increasingly operate in mutual partnership.
The unfolding scandal surrounding the Adani Group is no longer merely a story about corporate misconduct or allegations of bribery. It has become a disturbing mirror reflecting the deeper transformation of the Indian republic itself — a transformation in which political power, corporate wealth, institutional weakness, and aggressive nationalism increasingly operate in mutual partnership.
At the centre of this storm stands Gautam Adani, one of the richest and most politically connected businessmen in India’s history. Allegations involving nearly 250 million dollars in bribery and influence-peddling linked to business operations and contracts have raised serious international concerns regarding corruption, regulatory manipulation, and the abuse of political proximity for private gain. In any healthy democracy, allegations of this magnitude would trigger relentless parliamentary scrutiny, institutional urgency, judicial intervention, and public accountability.
Instead, India has witnessed something very different.
Silence where there should be outrage.
Caution where there should be an investigation.
Protection where there should be scrutiny.
The contrast has become impossible for ordinary citizens to ignore.
For years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted the narrative of a muscular and modern “New India” driven by infrastructure, development, nationalism, and economic ambition. Yet beneath the spectacle of grand projects and patriotic rhetoric lies another India — one where economic power has become dangerously concentrated within a small network of politically favoured corporate giants.
No businessman symbolises this concentration more dramatically than Gautam Adani.
Over the last decade, the Adani empire has expanded into ports, airports, mining, logistics, power generation, renewable energy, food systems, transmission infrastructure, cement production, media influence, and strategic sectors closely linked to national development. The scale and speed of this expansion have few parallels in independent India. While defenders celebrate this as entrepreneurial success, critics increasingly see something else: the emergence of oligarchic capitalism enabled by political patronage.
This distinction matters profoundly.
There is a difference between capitalism functioning within democratic regulation and capitalism capturing democratic regulation itself. Democracies become deeply unstable when economic giants begin exercising disproportionate influence over public policy, state institutions, media narratives, infrastructure ownership, and national political priorities. In such conditions, the state gradually ceases to function as a neutral constitutional structure serving citizens equally. Instead, it begins appearing as a facilitator for elite accumulation.
The airport expansion drive before the 2024 elections illustrates this crisis vividly.
Airports were aggressively promoted as symbols of India’s rise toward global greatness. Massive public relations campaigns celebrated connectivity, modernisation, and economic transformation. Yet several airports developed, acquired, or expanded under accelerated political timelines now remain underutilised, financially questionable, commercially weak, or disconnected from sustainable economic demand. Vast public resources, regulatory concessions, policy flexibility, and institutional support enabled these projects.
But the ordinary taxpayer carries the burden when such ventures fail.
The farmer struggling with debt contributes through taxation.
The salaried worker contributes through inflation and indirect taxes.
The unemployed youth contributes to shrinking public expenditure.
The citizen facing cuts in welfare, healthcare, and education contributes through state prioritisation of corporate-led infrastructure over social justice.
Profit remains private.
Risk becomes public.
This model reveals the underlying logic of neoliberal oligarchy: public institutions absorb losses while private conglomerates consolidate ownership and long-term strategic control over national assets.
The moral outrage surrounding this issue emerges not merely from allegations of bribery but from the broader perception that India’s institutions no longer function equally for all citizens.
Nothing demonstrates this more sharply than the growing crisis of confidence surrounding the judiciary and investigative agencies.
India today witnesses a deeply troubling contradiction. Students, journalists, activists, academics, trade unionists, minority voices, and citizens participating in democratic protest often face extraordinary legal aggression from the state. Draconian laws such as the UAPA are deployed with alarming regularity against dissenters accused of threatening national security or public order. Bail is delayed. Trials move slowly. Punishment begins long before conviction.
At the same time, individuals and corporations accused of enormous financial misconduct, regulatory manipulation, or political corruption frequently appear insulated by procedural caution and institutional hesitation.
This asymmetry has become politically devastating because democracies survive not merely through constitutions but through public faith in equal justice.
Citizens now increasingly perceive that the coercive machinery of the state operates aggressively downward against the weak while behaving cautiously upward toward concentrated wealth and political proximity. Courts that can act overnight in matters involving political controversy often appear hesitant and procedurally restrained when confronting powerful corporate interests.
Whether fully justified or not, this perception has profound consequences for democratic legitimacy.
Because when the law appears selective, justice itself loses moral credibility.
The deeper tragedy is that this pattern is becoming normalised.
Public anger today is not simply directed at one businessman. It is directed at an entire political culture in which billionaires appear capable of acquiring extraordinary influence over infrastructure, policy, finance, media, and governance while remaining insulated from meaningful accountability. Citizens increasingly fear that India is drifting toward a system where electoral democracy survives formally, but economic and political power become concentrated within an unaccountable alliance of state authority and oligarchic wealth.
This is why comparisons with the “Trumpian era” resonate so strongly across global democracies.
In several countries, billionaire capitalism has fused with populist nationalism to produce systems where corporate concentration is justified in the language of patriotism, development, and national greatness. Media ecosystems become polarised. Institutions weaken under political pressure. Critics are branded anti-national. Investigative agencies function selectively. Wealth buys influence while political leadership provides protection.
India appears increasingly vulnerable to this trajectory.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot be politically separated from this reality because the extraordinary rise of the Adani empire unfolded during his tenure and within the ideological framework of his governance model. The repeated public proximity between political leadership and corporate expansion has created a widespread perception that state policy increasingly favours powerful conglomerates while ordinary citizens face economic precarity and shrinking democratic protections.
Political responsibility, therefore, cannot simply be outsourced to corporations alone.
When governments appear unwilling to ensure equal accountability before the law, they become morally implicated in the erosion of institutional trust. Democracies do not collapse only because corrupt businessmen exist. Democracies weaken when political systems normalise corporate impunity and allow concentrated wealth to shape governance itself.
If allegations involving bribery and corruption on this scale are true, then accountability must extend beyond symbolic outrage or media management. It must involve independent investigation, judicial courage, parliamentary scrutiny, and institutional integrity capable of confronting power without fear.
Otherwise, the republic risks teaching its citizens a devastating lesson: that justice in India is reserved primarily for the powerless.
That lesson destroys democratic faith far more effectively than any external enemy ever could.
Ultimately, The Great Escape is not simply the story of one billionaire allegedly escaping accountability after a massive scandal. It is the story of how accountability itself appears to be escaping from the Indian democratic framework. It is the story of a republic struggling to defend its institutions against the combined pressures of concentrated wealth, political patronage, media influence, and institutional compromise.
The danger before India is therefore not only economic corruption.
It is democratic corrosion.
Because when citizens begin believing that billionaires stand above the law while dissenters are crushed beneath it, the crisis ceases to be merely political. It becomes civilisational.
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
