Dynasty and downfall !

Dynasty and downfall !

This comes after seeing the movie Agnipath.. the one with Hrithik Roshan.

History repeatedly tells us of the downfalls of dynasties. In the older times it was only the dynasties of kings that were in evidence. But nowadays we see political and business dynasties too. What is about them that makes them fail ? 

There is a lot of research , specially on business dynasties and one popular theory is that typically  it takes 3 generations for the rise and fall. The first generation creates it, the second sustains and the third helps it demise. Rather like Brahma , Vishnu and Mahesh. Some of the reasons recorded for the downfall are lack of professionalisation/ nepotism and  complacence.  Post independence we have seen many “reputed” business families go into oblivion. The DCM group, and Escorts group are well known examples.. but there are probably  many more. I saw an article sometime back which said it was the “curse of the sons” .. which meant that businesses had to be divided to keep the sons in good humour and thereby the companies lost significant advantages. The Birla family was cited as an example.  DCM and Escorts certainly fit this theory. As a counterpoint, the article noted, the TATAs had prospered because in the last 2 generations the head of the business did not have any children.

Indian business families, have not yet learnt to separate ownership from day-to-day control, something western business families have done.

Coming back to Agnipath.. it is a horrible movie. The story, if there is one, has so many flaws that it looks like a patchwork with millions of squabbling incidents. The performances, barring Rishi kapoor , are mediocre. The Amitabh Bachan version was much better.

So how is this connected to dynasties..? Because Bollywood is mainly a dynasty business. Unfortunately genes have a will of their own and oftentimes  the child of a good actor parents might not be able to repeat the performance. I have said elsewhere that Bollywood will continue to churn out mediocre stuff till we have Kapoors, Khannas and Malhotras running it. Add to it Khans too. In fact the only good hindi films I have seen in recent times have been by “outsiders” like Anurag Basu , Anurag Kashyap, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Dibakar Banerji,  etc.

Without making this too long, let me just point out that dynasties in politics might even be the downfall of our country if we allow them to rule us.