Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi appears to be one person who can lift the spirits of India Inc in the time of financial turmoil. This was amply demonstrated at a summit in Mumbai where Modi's spiel of pro-active governance bolstered his new image as darling of the business community.

His good governance hat firmly on, Narendra Modi's saffron turban was quickly forgotten. Addressing the big names of industry at a five-star hotel in South Mumbai, he urged his audience to put their money and faith in his state and promised all manner of help and permissions forthwith. The speech, which repeatedly jabbed at all the right buttons of efficiency, cooperation and enterprise, was a far cry from his usual political rhetoric, used as recently as his election rallies in Chhattisgarh last week.

In progress was the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summit attended by businessmen, entrepreneurs and multinationals. The Ambani brothers (who had separate meetings with Modi), Shashi Ruia, Ajit Gulabchand, Adi and Jamshyd Godrej, Nimesh Kampani, Harsh Goenka, Niranjan Hiranandani, Vinod Mittal and Nikhil Meswani frontlined a host of small and medium entrepreneurs. As the heads of business queued up to get an audience, it was hard to believe that this was the same Modi who had been denied a US visa because of the 2002 Gujarat violence.

Instead, the rehabilitated new chief minister was seen solely as the man who had green-lighted Ratan Tata's Nano project in a few hours flat. Apart from the winning cards of good infrastructure, smooth roads and quick redressal of business issues, Modi's trump card remains the Tata's small-car project that his state has won.

He warned that with the credit crunch, there could be an unprecedented rise in ‘dirty money' — funds from illegal sources such as drug and arms dealers. This, he said, would only deepen the crisis in the country.

When the head of a Mumbai-based construction company said that Modi should personally call upon the Reserve Bank governor to discuss the current financial crisis, he did not hesitate a second before answering in the affirmative. He added that he had been prompting the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P Chidambaram to meet financial and business heads to get a clear picture of the gravity of the situation.