‘Greed is good!’ Micheal Douglas says in Wall Street, and everything that follows reminds us that we have to choose our heroes with care. I started watching Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story on Sony Liv as soon as it began to stream at midnight. And wondered how so many people could be sweet talked so easily by a man who thought he could manipulate the system and get away with it, simply because the paperwork would be too complicated to catch him making an error.
The instantly-likeable hero in the series does not help. I have to remind myself that the greed of this man ruined many lives as grew from an ordinary lad who lived in a chawl into this callous man who manipulated and used a corrupted system to his advantage without worrying that small investors like his friend Rahil were losing not just their money but their minds when their investments crashed.
‘Harshad Bhai nu raaj ma, sab maja ma!’ some said, because they made money as he manipulated stocks like ACC and Polo Steel. But when you look at his competitors (called the Bears of the market) and see that they are worse than him, you watch the story unfold with a sense of dread. Harshad Mehta is a name that even whistleblowers cannot say without being afraid.
But, how did he get to be this monster of Dalal Street? Director Hansal Mehta manages to fool us by showing us what a nice young man he is: he grows up in a chawl in Ghatkopar but wants to earn more money so that they have a bigger home.
The instantly likeable Pratik Gandhi (a Gujarati theater and film actor whom I have seen in Dhunki and Wrong Side Raju) does a great job, transforming from an innocent and earnest lad who wants to better himself into someone who calmly tells the car dealer, ‘The forty five lakhs is the price of the Lexus and ten lakhs is the price for your word.’
The villainy is yet to come. Soon Harshad learns to take bigger and bigger risks, moving money from banks and clients using convenient financial instruments to make money for himself and short changing banks for enormous sums. Like 500 crore rupees. And that’s just from the State Bank Of India.
You watch the linkable lad turn into this avaricious, arrogant monster who does not listen to good advice from either his brother or his friend Bhushan Bhatt who once showed him the ropes of how the market works.
You have watched several movies where the men who game the system enjoy the brief reign as in Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short. How they are flamboyant and unrepentant, but we have also seen how like in The Laundromat, no matter how much you try to hide the crime, someone, somewhere will spot the irregularities and bring you to book.
Just as Meryl Streep discovers the secret behind shell companies in The Laundromat, a young journalist Sucheta Dalal first begins to look at ‘something wrong’ in the deal between the Amitabh Bachchan of Dalal Street and SBI. Of course the government comes down hard on high flier Harshad Mehta and we watch with horror as the poor ‘jobbers’ on the floor of the stock exchange suffer because Harshad Mehta is now caught.
The CBI slowly traps the man by catching his accomplices and making them talk. Rajat Kapoor as the CBI officer manages to scare K K Raina (who plays Mr. Pherwani, the head of NSB), the bankers at SBI and Bhushan Bhatt too. We watch how politics and greed mix when we see the RBI Governor (played by Anant Mahadevan) seems powerless.
Sucheta Dalal’s frustration at not being able to find any paper trail or anyone who dares to go on record about Harshad Mehta’s various wrongdoings is ominous to watch. The man helping her admits that everyone uses the system and that he does it too comes gently. But he tells her, ‘I do not break the equilibrium’. I wonder if the journalist understands that a small thief is no different from a big thief. Is this source really going to help her?
So far we have seen how good Harshad Mehta gets at making money. We know few can resist his silvery tongue: Give me two hours and I will convince you that although my methods are unorthodox, we will make profits.
It takes the series a while to show us that the hero of the show really is the journalist duo of Sucheta Dalal (played by Shreya Dhanwanthary) and Debashis Roy whose hard work helped put a spotlight on these banking irregularities. It’s only in the sixth episode of the ten episode series (and by the time I’m writing this, the tenth episode has not yet streamed), that the audience begins to understand why a journalist cannot give up on her need to share her expose of this man who bends the rules as and when he wants…
I found myself rooting for this journalist when she says, ‘This isn’t a loan that he can return whenever he wants,’… Then she adds, ‘Since when did we journalists stop going after criminals because nobody has reported them to the authorities?’
The show actually becomes better and sharper and bigger after this. You realise that it is more complicated than just the big bad bull and the journalist who brought him down. You wish there were more episodes that got into this in detail. I must admit that I did not want the Big Bull brought down by bad politics, and wished that Rajat Kapoor and Sharib Hashmi (has such a tiny role) would have more to offer. And it was annoying that we have to wait for the last episode to drop, this show is that good.
Here is where I want to say what a wonderful actor Pratik Gandhi is. You know he’s done something illegal, but you admire his chutzpah when he makes that one call he’s allowed in jail and then confidently says to the cop, ‘Lala, lock kar de ab.’ The attitude in that walk, the determination to never give up or break down is brilliantly done. And even though you know he deserves to be in jail, you feel bad because the CBI is not asking him the right questions.I am told that the man in real life too, had great charisma. The director Hansal Mehta, the writers have all done a great job! You know you should hate him for the destruction of our beliefs in our financial systems but somewhere you cannot help liking him.
I have just watched and reviewed the Netflix docuseries Bad Boy Billionaires: India a couple of days ago and found it wanting. This series on Sony Liv is so engrossing and so wonderfully done, I would love to see more. The making of the series, perhaps? A different take where the real hero: the journalists get to be the heroes instead of Harshad Mehta? I think this world needs shows about female protagonists who unravel long running scams…
One is now so used to ‘skipping intro’ in all these series when you binge watch that it frustrated me to have to go ahead physically. Perhaps all streaming platforms will streamline some day. Delhi Crime on Netflix has been the best content I have come across so far from India, in my humble opinion, but this series is a jackpot. It taught me so much about banking without making me fall asleep (as I said, I started watching the show at midnight) and I watched my respect for dogged journalism grow as well.
Banking systems changed after this humongous scam was uncovered, and regulations are now stricter. Internet banking will create different kinds of villains some day, and we will see them brought to book. Perhaps there will be a time when men who want to be larger than life will actually be good men who defeated the bears who want to bring small investors down. I must admit that flawed heroes make for a fascinating watch. As his wife’s words ring true,’ Risk mein Ishq hai.’
Manisha Lakhe Is A Poet, Film Critic, Traveller, Founder Of Caferati — An Online Writer’s Forum, Hosts Mumbai’s Oldest Open Mic, And Teaches Advertising, Films And Communication.
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