The India Story Review: Not Brave Enough!

The India Story adopts a very soap opera-like approach, piling on ham-fisted melodrama along with plenty of unevenness, sighs Sreeju Sudhakaran.

Is there some rule that if your movie has the word ‘Story’ or ‘Files’ in the title, there has to be some adulteration in its message? Which feels ironic for The India Story, directed by Chettan D K, that talks about adulterated food grains harming the nation.

You may think I am being harsh on this small movie here.

After all, this is a film that addresses a very important issue: How the use of pesticides in crops has become a silent killer for the nation’s population, and how it is linked to the rising number of cancer cases in the country.

Considering we are seeing reports almost every day about adulterated milk, adulterated ghee, fake paneer and much more, The India Story tries to start an important conversation, particularly in an industry that has been rather stingy about talking of issues affecting the masses. At least, in recent years.

The issue is that The India Story does so in half measures, and even those measures come by pointing fingers all over the place, except at the people who really matter.

The Plot and Its Flaws

The movie begins with Yogesh (Shreyas Talpade), a former army major, trying to file a case over the death of his seven-year-old daughter Pari (Trisha Sarda). Pari dies of blood cancer caused by toxins present in the pesticides used in food production.

Yogesh wants to drag the entire pesticide industry to court, but no lawyer is willing to fight the case. Then, suddenly, we discover that he has found a lawyer in Archana (Kajal Aggarwal), with this being her very first case. I found it odd initially that the movie skipped over how he found this rookie lawyer out of the blue.

Fret not, for the movie explains it later as some sort of gotcha twist meant to jolt you. Jolt me it did, but not because it was surprising. Rather, because it felt forced, a twist purely for the sake of having one. There was no need for that revelation to come at that particular point, made more jarring that no one had apparently bothered to check her background. And we are talking about billion-dollar companies that are out to get her.

Manish Wadhwa plays the high-profile lawyer hired to defend the corporations. All he does is keep belittling Archana and, at one point, even puts her in the witness box.

I am not a hotshot lawyer myself, but even I know that when the opposing counsel produces a witness, you are also supposed to question them. This man actually makes Archana’s job, and in fact the movie’s job, much less complicated, turning the proceedings into a courtroom docudrama for novices.

Blaming the Wrong Targets

Returning to Archana, she makes a bold declaration in court that shocks the nation. She claims it is the farmers who are responsible for the rising toxicity in food because of their use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers.

Fair point.

But here’s where I have a major issue with The India Story. It wants to blame the smallest denomination, but refuses to address the system that forces them to use chemical fertilisers.

If the movie looks at the larger picture, then it has to blame the middlemen and their warehouses, where chemicals are also sprayed. There is a brilliant scene in the Malayalam film How Old Are You that depicts this very crime. And then it also has to blame the government for allowing all this to happen under its nose while failing to provide a cheap organic alternative.

That’s exactly where is where the movie doesn’t want that line to be crossed. It is easier for the female lead to blame farmers who already have a gazillion problems, from mounting debts to rising suicides. It can blame nameless corporations, but it is afraid to question those higher up.

Why? The answer is not hard to guess.

The movie portrays the ruling politicians in a favourable light. There is a scene where the corporations, led by an Indian businessman awkwardly dressed up as a foreigner, meet the agriculture minister, who refuses their demands and bribes. Na khaunga, na khane dunga, right?

The trailer even had the same minister in that same scene declaring, ‘Another party was in power when their licences were approved. This is New India.’

Maybe the Censor Board thought that was a bit too much after Dhurandhar 2 sanitised demonetisation because the line has been removed from the film. But you get the idea of how The India Story is scared to play with fire where it actually matters.

Even when Archana, accompanied by a court-appointed police officer (Murali Sharma), travels nation-wide to investigate malpractice in the agricultural sector, the states she visits, where people are suffering from cancers caused by chemical fertilisers, happen to be Punjab and Kerala, neither of which is presently ruled by a particular party.

Usually, I would have said the movie had good intentions but was let down by its execution. Here, though, even the intentions feel compromised.

Melodramatic Storytelling

As for the execution, The India Story adopts a very soap opera-like approach, piling on ham-fisted melodrama along with plenty of unevenness. For instance, there is a scene where Archana and Yogesh are manhandled in a market because of her remarks about farmers. Yet, just two scenes later, people are cheering and rooting for her.

How that collective change of heart happens, no one knows. The editing is all over the place, the cuts feel very obvious, not helped by the cuts that the Censor Board has reportedly demanded from them.

The India Story at least feels like it has something worthwhile to say when it remains inside the courtroom. But once Archana reveals the twist surrounding her character, the movie slips into a lengthy flashback exploring Yogesh’s family life and his relationship with his daughter.

I understand that the track is meant to provide the emotional weight behind Yogesh’s legal battle, but it hardly felt necessary to be so long. We are already on his side at the beginning, at least until the movie starts pointing fingers elsewhere.

Instead on developing their narrative better, the flashback leans far too heavily into tearjerker territory, trying to squeeze out maximum sympathy for the protagonists over something that has already been firmly established: The girl has died, and the father is fighting, err… the farmers, for her and countless others like her.

It may work for some sections of the audience, but my tear ducts don’t function that way. I kept wondering why, considering Yogesh’s family is initially shown to be quite well-off and he himself is an army major, they never approach friends or colleagues for help during their daughter’s treatment.

All we see is the family struggling alone in isolation.

Here too, the movie had the opportunity to address larger issues, namely the exorbitant treatment costs at private hospitals that push families into poverty, and the poor condition of government-run hospitals.

The India Story acknowledges these problems, but merely uses them to fuel the melodrama. Not once do Yogesh or Archana bring them into the larger conversation. Again, it is not hard to guess why.

The Performances

Shreyas Talpade gets far more to do during the flashback portions, with his courtroom presence mostly limited to silently observing the proceedings and reacting in shock. He is convincing enough to make the emotional drama work. He also gets a monologue in the climax that, given his character is a soldier, injects a dose of patriotism into his argument.

However, during the early portions of the flashback, his hairstyle looks distractingly artificial, and it doesn’t take long to understand why. Sure, the ‘reveal’ carries an emotional punch, but a little more care with the styling would have made it far more effective.

Kajal Aggarwal is just about okay. She delivers the speeches well enough, but her expressions remain inconsistent, you are just not sure what’s going on with her mind, and I don’t think that was an intentional character trait.

Murali Sharma does his part well. Despite the mopey writing around her character, little Trisha Sarda is impressive as Yogesh’s ailing daughter.

The India Story raises an issue that desperately deserves attention, but by refusing to question the system that enables it, the film ends up diluting its own argument. What could have been a hard-hitting wake-up call instead settles for being a safe, preachy courtroom drama.