Movie Review: Guru

First of all I would like to admit that I was wrong when I said that the name of the movie ‘Guru’ is not appropriate. I also acknowledge ‘Villager, Visionary, Winner’ fitted well with the theme of the movie. I didnt knew that he plan to deny resemblence to Dhirubhai Ambani's life.

No doubt the movie is 'inspired' from the life of Dhirubhai Ambani. Abhishek Bhachchan claims that he fainted when Mani Ratnam offered him the role. Abhishek - did Mani narrate you the whole story over phone before you could faint or Mani just said "I am making movie on life of Dhirubhai Ambani and I want you to play the lead role?"

Abhishek Bachchan was amazing in the movie and I am sure it would be one of the finest moments of his career. The way his look has evolved throughout the movie is just amazing and the credit should go to Mani Ratnam. Mani sir you are just amazing.

On the negative side, as feared too much importance was given to personal life. Vidya Balan’s character was not required and Ashwariya’s role could also have been shorter. I felt that there were two songs too many – specially the bhang song.

I felt that more importance should have been given to his business achievements, the regulatory environment in which he worked etc. It appeared from the movie that Dhirubhai's biggest achievement was making middleclass / shareholders rich. How can somebody miss Dhirubhai’s biggest achievement - the Jamnagar refinery and its implications for the country? I feel there is a fear among today film makers that Indian audience donot have appetite for anything else but romantic movie. To some extent the biopic was reduced to a romantic movie to make it commercially successful. I think that is lack of vision on the part of movie makers. If 50 lakh people are willing to apply for Reliance IPO I am sure these people are ready to watch a movie too based on him. I am not advocating making a documentary, but I believe Indians have appetite for biopics like A Beautiful Mind, Walk the line etc.

All in all, the movie was amazing. I heard one of the critics on one of the Tv channels complaining about the last 4.5 minute speech by Guru comparing himself to Mahatma Gandhi. I don’t understand why people consider Mahatma Gandhi so sacred. He had his black spots or gray shades. Everybody knows about his sex life, Chora chori incident etc. And compare at the result – his efforts lead to independence but also partition of India and Dhirubhai Ambani’s effort is helping India become an economic super power. I felt that the speech should have been a bit longer.

People need to understand that we need law breakers like Mahatma Gandhi and Dhirubhai Ambani. These law breakers teach these law makers what is right law and what is wrong law. And the best test of ‘right’ law is history. The fact that the same government is lifting the license Raj is proof of the fact that law was wrong in the first place.

Mr Arun Shourie’s speech is a good pointer towards that. He worked for the same newspaper which was propagating against Dhirubhai Ambani (Guru). The reporter was Mr. Gurumurthy (Madhavan) and the newspaper was Indian Express (Independent). He said

“I first learnt about him through the articles of my colleague S. Gurumurthy. The point in most the article was that Reliance had done something in excess of what had been licensed; it was producing in excess of that capacity”.

Most would say today that those restrictions and conditions should not have been there in the first place, that they are what held the country back, he said. Dhirubhai should be thanked for exceeding the limits in which those restrictions sought to impound them as it helped to create a case for scrapping those regulations, he added.

Referring to his relationship taking a turn, he said “we had all got convinced that persons like him had done the country a service. He was always direct and full of ideas about what the country should do, if only it would be allowed to do it”.

What wrong did he do if he produced goods in excess of the licensed capacity for a country which is suffering black-marketing due to lack of production. Would you complain today about a person who produces more electricity than he is licensed? Would you mind if somebody comes up with idea to increase railway capacity or if Capt. Gopinath flies more Air Deccan flights? Today we are unable to grow at the pace at which we are capable of because we don’t have enough electricity, enough railway seats, and enough airports. And the fault is that of the law makers and not the law breakers. Tomorrow if an entrepreneur builds a new airport near Mumbai or Delhi against the law he should be lauded and not punished.

We have enough capital and human resource to build the infrastructure we are lacking. What is holding back our growth is government restrictions. We have seen how scarping of license raj has helped sectors like telecom and Airlines. We need similar scarping of license raj in Power, Airports, and Mining etc.

Job in hand for government is very easy – just get aside and watch India grow. But somehow they are working overtime to restrict India’s growth.