For those who are not from the South, it is difficult to imagine the kind of deity status that big film stars enjoy among their fans. There is an almost religious quality to the devotion that fans, often organized into well-organized fan clubs, lavish on their heroes. New releases are celebrated extravagantly, with coconut bursting, garlanding of giant cut-outs and processions. The shocks, too, receive equally over the top response. When Kannada superstar late Dr Raaj Kumar was kidnapped by sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, Bengaluru went up in flames as angry fans demanded his immediate release. And when the late MG Ramachandran, arguably the first megastar from the South, fell ill, there was a flood of self-immolation by grief-stricken fans.
Among the current crop of big stars in the Tamil film industry, Ajith Kumar is arguably one of the biggest. Fondly called “Thala” (literally, “chief” or “boss”) by his fans, Ajith is a megastar in Kollywood, popular in all southern states but attaining deity status in Tamil Nadu. He is an action hero, so he is sure of his place. in the hearts of her followers that she stopped bothering with cosmetic attempts to hide her age years ago. in his latest film thunivu (translatable as ‘courageous’ or ‘courage’), for example, he appears with his natural salt-and-pepper hair and a snowy white beard.
thunivuwhich released during Pongal weekend (equivalent to Diwali release for Bollywood or Salman’s Eid release), collected 23 crores on Day 1, despite clashing with Vijay’s new release from an equally big megastar, “Thalapathy” (“The General”). Varisu, A young fan of Ajith also died in extravagant processions taken out by fan clubs to celebrate the return of their favorite star on the big screen.
Given the overwhelming response from fans, it is therefore doubly unfortunate that Ajith didn’t do some research on his own about what his character was saying in the film, or director H. Vinoth to depict the actions of the villains in the film. How was it chosen? , The ‘villains’ are a group of crooked bankers who scam gullible investors by running a crooked “mutual fund”, which fails. Ajith then plans an elaborate bank robbery to rob the bank where the scammers have deposited their looted money.
So far so formulaic, but the problem is the way mutual funds are portrayed in the film. The fallout of unregistered alternative savings schemes like chit funds and gold savings schemes run by jewelers is very common (emphasis on “unregistered” here), it is unfortunate that the film has attempted to portray mutual funds, a well-regulated and investment options for millions of trusted middle-class savers with a single brush. In fact, government-run Unit Trust of India and privately run mutual funds were allowed thirty years ago by market regulator SEBI after the Harshad Mehta scam. There is not a single known case of a mutual fund “disappearing” along with investors’ money.
In fact, there are SEBI regulations on MFs which ensure that these funds not only have to disclose their investment strategy but also do the actual deployment of corpus on a regular basis. The fee they can charge for this is also regulated and capped by SEBI. Mutual funds must disclose to investors that investments are subject to market risks.
In such a situation, it is a matter of concern that a megastar like Ajith speaks anti-MF lines in a film. For many fans, the line between fictional and real is often blurred. The reason the megastar enjoys such a huge fan following is that fans attribute the heroic exploits of his on-screen persona to the real-life actors who play those roles on screen. What they say — and do — on screen isn’t always viewed with the willing suspension of disbelief that mass entertainers ask for.
Ajith’s on-screen sayings thunivu There is bound to be another setback for the development of an informed investment culture in Tamil Nadu. Despite being an industrially developed and economically advanced state with high literacy levels, the penetration of equity investments – especially mutual funds – in Tamil Nadu is already very poor. TN has only 63 lakh registered investors with demat accounts, compared to 1.23 crore registered investors in Gujarat and 2.4 crore registered investors in Maharashtra, two states with comparable economic development, according to BSE data.
Mutual funds are also very poorly represented. According to the Association of Mutual Fund Industries of India, Maharashtra accounts for over 42 per cent of the assets under management of mutual funds in India, while Tamil Nadu’s share is just 4.2 per cent. Ajith’s actions in Thunivu are unlikely to help improve that number.
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