'Khaidi No. 150' may be leaving many of them in tears by evoking sympathy for the plight of hapless farmers in water-scarce regions, but days after the original (that is, 'Kaththi') was released in Tamil, an award-winning IAS officer by name Alex Paul Menon wrote a blog critiquing the movie's wrong message. You might recoil when someone says the movie has a wrong message. How can something very touching be wrong, you might shoot back. But no, there is a reason why the IAS officer suggested that the message of Khaidi No. 150's original is misleading!

You find Chiranjeevi (as Vijay in the original) finding fault with MNCs for draining entire villages of the most important natural resource: water. But are MNCs the biggest culprit, at the macro level? NO. "The deep bore-wells that people dig, the lakes and ponds that we fill up for real estate purpose are responsible for the water scarcity and not just the corporates and cola companies as the film shows," the IAS officer opined in 2014. “It is our lack of knowledge about water conservation that is the biggest adversary. The problems that we face re because of us," he was quoted as saying.

This is the fact. The depletion of groundwater table across India is NOT because of corporates. It's has been actively abetted by distorted government policy of Minimum Support Price for the "water-guzzling" paddy and wheat for decades now. In the original, Vijay outrages that the rich have strawberry-flavoured condoms to use, but the poor can't even afford to eat them. True. But the cause should be located in the MSP regime, not MNCs. Horticulture has suffered because of incentives in favour of paddy and wheat. The result is: fruits and vegetable price inflation has grown in response to supply-demand mismatch, making them unaffordable for the poor. It's sexy to blame the corporates, though!

The IAS officer gives right-minded solutions for ending water scarcity in the villages. “People's leaders are hidden among you in every panchayat. Don't look for them on screens. Create Hiware Bazars (a Maharashtra village which fought drought and put in place a successful water conservation programme after its only postgraduate Popatrao Baguji Pawar was elected panchayat president) all over Tamil Nadu. Water activists are everywhere in India addressing conservation necessities." Replace Tamil Nadu in the sentence with any State of India, it would still hold true and forceful.

Probably unaffected by Communism, the makers of 'Khaidi No. 150' tried to tone down the rhetoric and avoided hyperbolic language of the original to an extent. But they couldn't avoid the flawed Bharath Vs India binary, as is evident in the way Hyderabad is starved of water for three days by Chiranjeevi and Co. The episode, however, is interesting from the standpoint of appeal.