People, as we know well, are helpless in a venal parliamentary system. Who clears up the mess? Sarkar, who rose from the lanes of illegality to acquire the piety of a bhishma pitamah and the cultured mien of a philosopher-king.

He is the sainted one minus any black shades - excluding the black designer lungi-kurta, of course. He is never the aggressor but responds in full measure as per Hammurabi's code of an eye for an eye. Nothing black about that. Varma's icons for 'democratic' development are Sarkar, Sarkar baba and the representative of an Enron-like foreign power plant company: broad-based enough decision-making.

Sarkar baba, whose surname Nagre somehow has a familiar ring, points out sapiently, "Since the people have given us so much trust, we should take the right decisions for them." That's only fair in a democracy.

Here Varma is at his insidious best. Step one: portray an authoritarian, political power broker with a vast illegal empire as the noble fount of power -- not as a 'parallel' power centre - and democracy's only hope.

Step two: make the villain a political persuasion - 'Gandhian' ideas - Luca Brasi style.

Step three: paint people's opposition to a power plant estimated to displace 40,000 villagers, as an ignorant, violent lot - the only act of violence Varma seems to be critical of in the movie.

The camera captures the 'people' as a faceless mob. The city, an all-embracing 'character' in such films, is non-existent. Of the caricatured constitutional system or Sarkar's opponents, the less said the better.

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