Kanga Ranaut is a good actress, no doubt about it. She has forced her way into the industry with her sheer talent, and since her debut in 2006’s Gangster, it was clear that her superstardom was inevitable. She has a collection of Filmfare and National Film award which can hold its own against anyone in the business.

 

However, her off-screen persona is simply unnecessary. Her battles with Hrithik Roshan, Karan Johar, and Abhishek Bhachchan on nepotism in the industry are founded on her own struggles breaking in, but the fact is that her aggression only displays her naivety.

 

She loves discussing her ‘normality’ and her battles with fitting in with the Bollywood community, but Bollywood is inherently an abnormal place, as is any entertainment industry around the world. Normality may not be the norm but it also is not what sells; the masses want their stars to be larger than life, superhuman in every aspect. She cannot criticize what is simply good business. If people shunned her for not being able to speak English well when she came to Mumbai- well there’s another thousand good-looking girls who are pushing just as hard to break into the industry, who made themselves marketable through their command of the language.

 

While nepotism indeed impairs the industry to an extent, it is unfair to single out Bollywood as the supreme manifestation of the phenomenon. Everything in India and every other developing nation is based on connections; there is only so much to go around, and it is hard to fault people for attempting to help out their family first. Big business and politics feature just as much, if not more familial influence, and it is understood that this is the natural order of things in India.

 

While she has the right to voice her frustration, the aggressiveness and malice with which she goes about it makes her only look ungrateful. At the end of the day, she is still the beneficiary of circumstance; there were still fortunate events in her life which led her into the industry, otherwise she would not be where she was today. If you look for evil you’re going to see it, and Kangana seems hell bent on finding great fault with something which, at the end of the day, has given her everything she has.