"Guru"-what's in it for all of us?

All of you must have watched this movie by Mani Ratnam, an acclaimed director, released in late 2007.If you haven't, then you must watch it (on a legal DVD!).Loosely based on the late Polyester Prince (Dhirubhai Ambani), this is one great film Bollywood has churned out in the recent years.Here's more on the climax:

Gurubhai’s final speech in front of the commission is a scathing indictment of the vicious License-permit Raj that was prevalent in India post-independence. Individual entrepreneurship was stifled and thereby the growth of the Indian economy. Widespread red tapism ensured that the rich became richer and the poor remained poor, even decades after independence. The four and a half minute speech sums up the crux of India’s economic woes. It also contained the elements of a vociferous protest against the status quo and made a formidable pitch for a structural change in India’s economic policies.

The following are the key takeaways from the movie:

1.High risk appetite: Gurubhai demonstrates this in the game of coins when he was in Turkey. Calculated risk-taking pays more often than not in the world of business as well as life. One must come out of his/her comfort zone to achieve something big in life. A life without ambition is no life at all.

2.Entrepreneurial spirit: Gurubhai refuses the promotion offered by the multinational company he was working for in Turkey and surprises everybody when he decides to return to India to start something on his own. All this despite an elementary education, an uncooperative father, marginal capital and the anti-capitalist economic policies being followed in India under the veil of socialism. His gut feeling and tremendous self-belief is legendary and worth emulating.


3.Non conformity with archaic social norms: He defies the social norm by marrying Sujata who had earned notoriety throughout her village for a failed attempt to elope with her lover. Though Guru married her primarily for the dowry (to use as seed capital along with his own savings), he compensated for this by marrying against the accepted social norms and taking good care of his wife and brother-in-law.

4.Indomitable courage and self-belief: He takes the battle head-on with The Independent when its editor turns hostile towards him on account of his unethical business practices. He keeps his emotions aside and works overtime to make Shakti Industries the largest private company in India. However, he still respects the editor Manik Dasgupta as a fatherly figure for his support and encouragement when he was a struggler in Mumbai.

5.Dreaming big and working hard: Gurubhai dreamt bigger than any other Indian industrialist and thereby built a huge business empire from scratch. He worked tirelessly to achieve his high ambitions. He was a role model for the average Indian who wanted to make it big on his own. This is something all of us must imbibe in ourselves.

Though Gurubhai’s personality had a few shades of grey, his achievements and his contribution to Indian industry were unparalleled. He achieved in ten years what established industrialists with all the foreign degrees and connections could not in a hundred years. Sometimes, it is essential to break the law if it is not rational and against the public good.