'Sarkaru Vaari Paata' has not gone down well with many audience members for one crucial reason. They find Mahesh Babu's character inconsistent and hypocritical.
In the film, Mahesh owns a private finance business in the US. He congratulates himself for recovering loan amounts by using force. He chases his loanees on the streets and hits them hard. This is against the rights of an individual. Nobody has the legitimacy to use force and punishment except the courts.
The same Mahesh has a different logic in the second half of the film. He almost calls loan recovery agents goondas (while being a goonda himself in the US). Bank officials who demand the repayment of loans, thereby allegedly driving poor people to die by suicide, are described as murderers.
How fair is it for Mahesh to have different rules for himself and public sector banks? Netizens are justifying his double standards by saying that public sector banks in India write off the loans given to the likes of Vijay Mallya but they don't forgive middle-class/poor people who default on loans.
Financial discipline alone can sustain any business, be it private or public. That way, Mahesh and the film are wrong in villainizing bank officials.
A broad issue is of public sector banks being forced by politicians/governments to do reckless lending in order to benefit crony capitalists. But 'SVP' has no realistic solution to this systemic issue. No movie offers real solutions to problems. 'SVP' offers empty preaching and larger-than-life action sequences.
This brings us to the next question. Why does Mahesh kill and assault the villain's henchmen but doesn't harm the villain physically? In a way, small men bear a bigger price than the big fish in the film. Parasuram Petla should have rationalized this behaviour through a dialogue.
