Dasvi

The Classroom Behind Bars

There’s a moment in Dasvi that feels like a quiet rebellion, though the film itself might not realize it. Abhishek Bachchan’s Ganga Ram Chaudhary, a corrupt and barely literate politician, sits in a jail cell with a textbook open in front of him. The camera lingers on his face—not the swaggering, self-assured grin we’ve seen in the first act, but something closer to bewilderment.

He’s not just learning algebra; he’s learning how to see himself differently. The joke, of course, is that this man, who once wielded power like a blunt instrument, is now reduced to the most basic of human endeavors: education. But the film’s real tension lies in whether it can resist the urge to undercut that moment with easy laughs.

Can a comedy about a man discovering his own ignorance also take that ignorance seriously?

Dasvi arrives at a strange cultural crossroads. On one hand, it’s a Netflix original, a streaming-era comedy-drama that fits neatly into the platform’s appetite for accessible, mid-budget Indian films with star power. On the other, it’s a story about the right to education—a theme that feels almost radical in its simplicity.

The tagline, "Passing 10th class from jail is my Right to Education!", is both a punchline and a provocation. It’s the kind of line that could play as either a feel-good underdog slogan or a sharp critique of a system that lets men like Ganga Ram slip through the cracks until it’s almost too late. The film, unfortunately, doesn’t always seem sure which one it wants to be.

Tushar Jalota, directing only his second feature after Param Sundari (a film that, by all accounts, hasn’t left much of a cultural footprint), seems content to let the premise carry the weight of the story. That’s both Dasvi’s greatest strength and its most glaring weakness. The setup is undeniably compelling: a man who has spent his life exploiting others is forced to confront the one thing he’s never had to earn—knowledge.

It’s a classic fish-out-of-water scenario, and Bachchan, an actor who has spent much of his career oscillating between leading-man charm and self-aware goofiness, is well-suited to the role. He plays Ganga Ram with a kind of blustery confidence that borders on caricature, but there’s a vulnerability there, too. When he stumbles over basic math problems or mispronounces words, it’s hard not to feel a pang of recognition.

Who among us hasn’t, at some point, been humbled by our own ignorance?

The problem is that Dasvi too often defaults to broad comedy when it could be digging deeper. The film’s tonal balancing act—comedy and drama—isn’t so much a tightrope walk as it is a series of stumbles. One minute, we’re laughing at Ganga Ram’s antics as he tries to navigate the prison’s social hierarchy (a scene where he attempts to ingratiate himself with the other inmates by offering them "political favors" is genuinely funny).