By Sanju Verma
In a brazen display of journalistic malpractice, The Washington Post has once again descended into rabid anti-India propaganda with its October 24, 2025, hit piece co-authored by the notorious Ravi Nair. Titled “India’s $3.9 billion plan to help Modi’s mogul ally after U.S. charges”, this so-called “investigation” peddles a grotesque fiction, that the Indian government strong-armed the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC)—the trusted guardian of over 30 crore Indians’ savings, into funneling $3.9 billion into the Adani Group companies, as a bailout for Gautam Adani. Nair, already facing a defamation lawsuit from Adani for his earlier baseless rants in Frontline magazine and social media tirades, has now weaponised anonymous unverified “internal documents” and cherry-picked quotes to defame LIC, Adani, and the Modi government. This isn’t reporting; it is a desperate, dollar-fuelled vendetta by a foreign outlet allergic to India’s stellar rise under Modi. Let us dismantle this tissue of lies, brick by venomous brick.
Nair paints a picture of frantic Modi government officials twisting LIC’s arms to rescue a “cash-strapped” tycoon (Adani) from “mounting debt”. What a load of sensationalist drivel. LIC has categorically rejected these allegations as “false, baseless and far from the truth”, stating unequivocally, “No such proposal or document had ever been prepared by the insurer or the government.” LIC’s investments are made independently, governed by board-approved policies and rigorous due diligence, with zero meddling from DFS or any other body. This isn’t some clandestine cabal—it is standard institutional investing by India’s largest insurer, managing over $659 billion in assets across over 351 listed stocks. Adani Group echoes this demolition—”We categorically deny involvement in any alleged government plans to direct LIC funds. LIC invests across multiple corporate groups; suggesting preferential treatment for Adani is, therefore, misleading.” What are Nair’s “documents”? Non-existent phantoms, conveniently shielded from scrutiny. If they exist, the Washington Post must publish them, or admit they are peddling Opposition-fuelled fairy tales. This is the same playbook Nair used in his “Frontline” smears, earning him a courtroom date for defamation. He’s not a journalist; he’s a repeat offender with an axe to grind.
Lie No. 2: Adani is the “cash-strapped” villain in a “crony capitalism” saga?
Nair loves to portray Adani as Modi’s personal piggy bank, propped up by taxpayer blood money while facing “U.S. charges” and Hindenburg’s ghost. Spare us the melodrama, will you? Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), the linchpin of Nair’s outrage, boasts India’s highest “AAA” credit rating—a gold standard of financial health that screams stability, not desperation. LIC’s May 2025 subscription to APSEZ’s issue (roughly $568 million, a fraction of the inflated $3.9 billion Nair has conjured) was actually a very smart, yield-boosting move for LIC with assured 7.75% returns, more than the yield on 10-year government securities. Why would LIC not invest in a triple-A-rated debt paper that assured returns that were way higher than government bonds? Adani’s debt? Sure, it has grown—but so has its business empire, powering India’s infrastructure boom with ports, airports, green energy and coal mines that fuel a big chunk of the nation’s power needs. This isn’t a bailout; it is a prudent allocation to a conglomerate whose growth predates Modi’s tenure, as the Adani group has itself noted on multiple occasions. As for Hindenburg and US probes? SEBI has dismissed fraud allegations after an intensive probe. Nair’s fictitious “multi-billion-dollar bribery scheme” hype ignores Adani group’s resilience—stock rebounds, global expansions and partnerships that scream success, not scandal.
LIC’s Adani exposure? It is at well below 2% of the Adani group’s total debt—hardly the “concentrated risk” notorious Nair rants about. Compare that to LIC’s top holdings—over $16bn in Reliance Industries, over $9.4bn in ITC and sizable stakes in HDFC Bank, TCS, Infosys and SBI. If diversified investing is “cronyism”, then every major fund on earth is guilty. Nair’s stupidly selective outrage exposes his bias—he ignores how the Congress-led UPA-era government (2004-2014) bloated LIC’s losses by forcing it to buy overpriced “disinvestment shares”, capping its growth. And under Modi? Well, let truth be told—LIC’s assets more than doubled post-2014, after Modi took charge at the helm, with LIC’s 2022 IPO valuing it far higher than the book value of the UPA era! LIC posted a net profit of Rs 48,151 crore in FY25 and Rs 40,697 crore in FY24. That is huge progress, not plunder. But Nair wouldn’t know, as his anti-Modi agenda keeps him away from hard facts.
Lie No. 3: Taxpayers footing the bill for Modi’s “best friend”?
Nair’s crowning calumny is his reckless allegation that ordinary Indians’ premiums are being “misused” to bail out a politically wired billionaire, with the likes of Rahul Gandhi screeching “Modani MegaScam”. This is peak hypocrisy from a self-styled scribe whose past “exposés” have crumbled under legal scrutiny. LIC’s equity yields under the Modi government far outpace the UPA era’s dismal returns, thereby safeguarding policyholders while generating superior returns. Adani isn’t a “mogul ally” sucking the public exchequer. On the contrary, it is an engine of national ambition, aligning with Modi’s vision for a self-reliant India, by driving India’s infrastructure boom. The Congress government in Telangana currently has allied with Adani for multiple projects for thousands of crores. So has the Left, in Kerala. So did the TMC in West Bengal. So did the Congress party under Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel when they were CMs in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, respectively, not too long back. So why has the notorious Ravi Nair never targeted the Congress or Left but always selectively trained his guns on the BJP and Modi? No prizes for guessing his “journalism” is bereft of facts and simply driven by anti-Modi rhetoric.
LIC’s decisions prioritise stakeholders, not shadowy directives. Ravi Nair isn’t uncovering truth; he’s a serial defamer waging jihad against India’s economic sovereignty, his ink dipped in the bile of short-sellers and colonial hangovers, much like the Washington Post. Slapped with Adani’s defamation suit in September 2025 for peddling unproven “Guardian” tales, he doubles down at WaPo, recycling Hindenburg’s admitted short-position playbook. This isn’t journalism—it is economic sabotage, designed to spook investors and tarnish Modi’s India as a banana republic. WaPo’s pattern is clear—demonise Adani, ignore China’s State-capitalist behemoths and then pray that India stumbles. But India doesn’t kneel. LIC thrives, Adani innovates, and Modi’s government is rapidly working towards “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, which has caused heartburn to many. To Nair and his enablers, retract this filth, or face the courts again. To readers, don’t swallow WaPo’s poison—demand evidence, not innuendo. India’s story is one of resilience and reform, not the dystopian, harebrained stories peddled by Modi’s naysayers in Western media. The truth? LIC invests wisely with investment decisions taken by an investment committee as per preordained rules by an independent Board with multiple checks and balances, Adani drives growth, creating millions of jobs and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most popular global statesman, leads a resurgent India, rising above smear campaigns, to have become the world’s fastest growing economy for the fourth year in a row and counting.
Ravi Nair’s Congress-OCCRP nexus shows he isn’t just a freelance scribbler with a grudge—he’s a cog in a well-oiled machine of foreign-funded disruption, where Indian Opposition politics, shadowy NGOs and Western deep-state agendas collide to sabotage PM Modi’s vision for a self-reliant Bharat. Nair’s latest WaPo piece on LIC and Adani is no accident; it is the latest salvo in a coordinated assault, amplified by the Indian National Congress (INC) and fuelled by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Let us peel back the layers of this insidious alliance, armed with irrefutable facts that expose how Nair, OCCRP and Congress operate in lockstep to defame the Modi government, undermine Indian businesses like Adani and advance a foreign agenda hostile to India’s sovereignty.
Nair’s “independent” journalism is anything but independent. His work reads like a Congress press release on steroids, timed to perfection for Opposition-led attacks and parliamentary disruptions. “Nair penned over 40 hit pieces, including a Frontline cover story, blasting the Modi government’s Rafale fighter jet deal as corrupt. This wasn’t organic reporting—it was the spark that Rahul Gandhi fanned into a national inferno, with Congress demanding probes and stalling Parliament for months. Nair co-authored OCCRP’s August 2023 exposé alleging Adani stock manipulation via offshore proxies tied to Gautam Adani’s brother. Rahul Gandhi seized it immediately, dubbing it the “Modani MegaScam” and waving OCCRP documents in Parliament to demand a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe”. The Pamphlet, doing exceptionally exemplary work, exposed how Nair’s lies were parroted repeatedly by Gandhi to smear Modi as pro-China, a blatant distortion that Congress milked for months. Be it Rafale or Pegasus, none of these recklessly vicious allegations by Nair ever stood the test of legal scrutiny, with the Supreme Court giving a clean chit to the Modi government on the Rafale deal, leaving Rahul Gandhi red-faced and his credibility torn apart. Why is WaPo compelled to provide a platform to Ravi Nair, who at best is a Congress-Soros mouthpiece and at worst, a low-IQ hack, driven by mindless hate for India that defies logic? Why is WaPo platforming anti-India hate, repeatedly? What gives?
Nair’s outrage has often been supported by The Wire (raided by ED for foreign funding in 2021), China-linked NewsClick, facing probe currently under UAPA and for illegal foreign funding and Frontline—all Congress-friendly echo chambers that peddle lies peddled by the Congress Party. Nair’s flimsy stories don’t present facts; they hand Congress the script for “anti-Modi” diatribe, based on fictitious drivel. OCCRP is a smear factory, a $50 million+ juggernaut bankrolled by USAID, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, designed to manufacture controversies that conveniently target India’s wealth creators and entrepreneurial resources. The notorious Nair, an OCCRP “partner journalist” since at least 2021, has been churning out Adani-focused “investigations”, based on hearsay, frivolous assumptions and with an agenda to vilify and defame PM Modi, by building imaginary stories of purported, gratuitous links between Adani and Modi, which have never ever been proven to date in any court of law. If anything, Modi’s credentials are absolutely impeccable, and he has zero tolerance for corruption. A notable adage goes like this: “The duty of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Clearly, The Washington Post has lost the plot.
Sanju Verma is an Economist, National Spokesperson of the BJP and the Bestselling Author of ‘The Modi Gambit’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect SAC’s views
