Trivial Pursuit 81

Arun Shourie became the Executive Editor of 'The Indian Express' in January 1979. He uncovered corruption in the highest echelons of the Government and exposed several major scandals.







In the early 1980's, Arun Shourie, as Editor of 'The Indian Express', broke the big A.R. Antulay story, ‘Indira Gandhi as Commerce’. The expose revealed that the then Maharashtra Chief Minister, Abdul Rehman Antulay, had started an organisation called the ‘Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan’, through which he collected illicit funds from builders.

The corruption scandal forced A.R. Antulay to resign. He resigned as Chief Minister of Maharashtra after the Bombay High Court convicted him on charges of extortion, on January 13, 1982. The court ruled that A.R. Antulay had illegally asked Mumbai area builders to make donations to 'Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratisthan', one of the several trust funds he had established and controlled, in exchange for receiving more cement than the quota allotted to them by the Government.






This caused the eventual resignation of the Chief Minister, and a great embarrassment to Indira Gandhi and her ruling Congress Party.


Arun Shourie's exposes resulted in a prolonged labour dispute at the Mumbai offices of the Indian Express, where a labour organizer with ties to A.R. Antulay, encouraged workers to strike for a minimum wage double than what was paid at any other newspaper in India. It also resulted in a Government crackdown that included a host of legal cases launched against 'The Indian Express' by various agencies. In 1982, the paper's owner Ramnath Goenka fired Arun Shourie as a result of the continued Government pressure.


This real life story was made into a controversial Hindi film. The 'uncomfortably authentic' political drama ran into trouble when film distributors and television refused to run the film, though later it went on to win three National Film Awards.


Identify the film.