Why Indians believe murky foreigners.

Hindenburg Research belongs to the "murky world" of activist short sellers who "Identify a company whose stock they judge as grossly overpriced," then "Borrow shares of the company from one or more brokers, sell them at the going overvalued price and then publish the report online." When share prices fall "the short seller buys as many shares he had borrowed and sold and returns them to the brokers." wrote Prof Arvind Panagariya. The Hindenburg-Adani episode "has demonstrated that allegations acquire special credibility with the Indian public when they are leveled by an entity based abroad," he writes contemptuously. That is because "Out of the 539 winners analysed in Lok Sabha 2019, 233 MPs (members of parliament) have declared criminal cases against themselves." India Today. A study by Dr Milan Vaishnav found that candidates with criminal records "had an 18% chance of winning their next election whereas the 'clean' candidates had only a 6% chance." BBC. Which means that Indians deliberately vote for criminals. One reason is that criminals have more money to spend on campaigning but the main reason is that criminals can force corrupt bureaucrats to perform their duties without extracting bribes. Carnegie. But, just because they vote for criminals does not mean they trust them. Hence, Indians believe when foreigners report corruption in India. Panagariya says the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) "should have been able to give its verdict fast". Even if it exonerates Adani, Indians will still hold their noses. "For nearly 18 months. about a dozen executives from the forensic team of consulting firm Ernst and Young (EY) went about investigating the true identity of the Himalayan yogi, the mystic who called the shots at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) between 2013 and 2016," wrote Varun Sood. The CEO of the NSE Chitra Ramakrishna allowed this 'yogi' to run a 'co-location scam' at the NSE in which some brokers could access stock prices a few seconds earlier than others allowing them to profit at the cost of others. News18. EY provided "bank statements, phone records, snapshots of Word and Excel files and geotagged images to prove the location of the unnamed person (yogi)," "And yet, Sebi in its order, dismissed the findings of the EY team." Shares of one Adani Group company was trading at price/earnings (P/E) ratio of 790 in September 2022, while "five of them have PE multiples of above 100x". ET. Sebi did nothing. Adani denied knowledge of "billions of dollars that flowed from Vinod Adani (brother of Gautam Adani) - associated offshore shell entities through the Adani Group," wrote Hindenburg. "Round tripping" refers to selling and purchasing shares of a company, thus creating an illusion of high demand and increasing their prices. Investopedia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adani are from Gujarat and, "As Modi climbed through the political ranks, he also displayed a close friendship with Adani". Time. Modi became prime minister in 2014 and "During this period, Adani's wealth increased by nearly 230% from $1.9 billion in 2014 to more than $26 billion this year." At 72% popularity, Modi is the most popular leader in the world. Reuters. But, Indians will still believe 'murky' foreigners.