Some men just want to watch the world learn.

 Some movies have unlikely heroes, but Dasvi (2022) has one of the unlikeliest.  Ganga Ram Chaudhary (Abhishek Bachchan) is the charming, arrogant, and gleefully corrupt Chief Minister of the semi-fictional state of Harit Pradesh.  (The "state" is actually a region in Uttar Pradesh with some cultural and linguistic differences which some have proposed breaking off as a new independent state.  It's clearly fictional, but perhaps a bit more plausible than an American movie dealing with the internal politics of the state of Cascadia.)

 Chaudhary's crimes may have finally caught up with him; he's implicated in a scam involving funding money form the state's schools, though it's never entirely clear whether Chaudhary was involved personally.  In any case, he's sent to jail and, at first, enjoys a comfy life. He has a luxurious private room, the guards and other prisoners are obsequious, and his shy wife Bimla (Nimrat Kaur) is able to serve as CM while he's away.

Things change pretty rapidly.  Stubborn and incorruptible new prison superintendent Jyoti Deswal (Yami Gautam) takes over, and suddenly Chaudhary has to stay in a regular cell and eat and work with the other prisoners, while Bimla has broken out of her shell and learned to love being in power.  She can only be CM while her husband is in jail, so suddenly the party machine is a lot less helpful.

Chaudhary is assigned to work in the wood shop, making chairs.  He does not want to make chairs, so he tries everything to get out of it, but Jyoti won't budge.  And then he gets his big idea - education!  Many of the prisoners are studying in the prison library to earn their high school diplomas, and Chaudhary is legally entitled to the same opportunity.

 It starts as a scam, but while reading about the history of the struggle for Indian independence, Chaudhary gets swept up in the narrative and starts imagining himself as a part of history, Wishbone-style.  Chaudhary learns from history so that he won't be condemned to repeat it, and dedicates himself to earning his degree properly.  In fact, he vows that he will not serve as CM anymore unless he can earn his degree.

There is a problem - Chaudhary is kind of a lunkhead with no noticeable skills beyond politics.  Fortunately some of his fellow prisoners are there to tutor him, and bicycle thief Ghanti (Arun Kushwah) discovers the secret - he teaches math using vote counts and election probability, and Chaudhary gets it!  Soon he's making strides in every subject except Hindi, and the only one he can turn to is Jyoti.  Meanwhile Bimla has realized that if Chaudhary doesn't pass the test and earn his degree, she gets to stay as CM, so she does everything she can to subtly interfere with his efforts. This causes tension in their marriage.

Chaudhary and Jyoti grow closer, and another movie would probably end with them realizing that they love each other, but Dasvi does not.  It's refreshing to see a genuine friendship develop onscreen between a man and a woman, and see that platonic relationship presented as something valuable that's worth fighting for.

 In any case, by the end of the movie Chaudhary's true love is education.  He's still something of a lunkhead, but he's a lunkhead who wants to learn, and wants to make it possible for others to learn as well.  I expected wacky school-related hijinks, but I did not expect a movie making such a strong argument for education for its own sake.  Perhaps Chaudhary is not such an unlikely hero after all.