MUMBAI, June 6 -- The USSR in turmoil, a war in the gulf, surging oil prices and geopolitical and economic headwinds.Sometimes history can repeat itself at an opportune moment for a filmmaker. When film director Vipul Shah who came of age in pre-liberalisation India decided to revisit India's balance of payment (BOP) crisis of 1991 for a film, little did he expect the prevailing challenges. Best-known in the Mumbai film world for directing pacy Akshay Kumar starrers like 'Aankhen', 'Namaste London', 'Waqt: Race against time' and producing films like Singh Is Kinng and multiple sequels of Commando, Shah's recent filmography has taken a more political turn. In 2023 he produced The Kerala Story, Bastar: The Naxal Story the following year and earlier this year he released The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond. On June 12 he releases Governor in which Manoj Bajpayee plays the role of S Venkitaramanan who was the Reserve Bank of India Governor in 1991 when India had to pledge its gold reserves to avoid a sovereign default. With forex reserves down to $ one billion, India airlifted 47 tonnes of physical gold and pledged it to the Bank of England and another 20 tonnes to the Union Bank of Switzerland to get urgent loans to avoid default. Shah's film centres on this episode, and places the decidedly non-flamboyant RBI governor at the heart of it. "It's a classic underdog story. The film brings out the human qualities and the silent power of the governor," says Shah. Though economists stress that any such critical decision like the pledging of national gold has to be made by the centre and not a bureaucrat like the RBI governor. To Shah's mind, Venkitaramanan's character is rather glamorous. "What he did at that time (1990) was massive. War heroes, politicians, cricketers have been made heroes of films but this story is from an India that was very different. Thirty-five years ago, there were no malls, there was no Coke or Pepsi. Getting a landline or a gas connection was also not easy. He (Venkitaramanan) laid the building blocks of the economy that India has become today. The youth need to know this." The BoP crisis during Chandra Shekhar's tenure as India's care-taker prime minister was one of the factors that led to Manmohan Singh liberalising the Indian economy when he became finance minister in PV Narasimha Rao's government. Singh has often been widely-lauded for opening up India's economy and transforming the country. Shah's film tries to show that it came on the back of many a quiet effort by those like Venkitaramanan. "He moved mountains to achieve what he did and his story can inspire people. It tells the audience that as long as you don't give up, you can help your country," says Shah speaking to HT over the phone in Mumbai....