The death of Malayalam actor, screenwriter, and director Sreenivasan is one of many losses across Kerala and the world that has induced deep sorrow.

But among the many tributes flowing in, one stands out not just for its unusual focus but also for its profound insight.

At the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, one of India's premier management institutes, faculty and students have come together to pay tribute to the lessons of "Ease of Doing Business" taught by Sreenivasan years before the phrase found its way into official files, management tomes, and PowerPoint presentations. It is a tribute that is nothing short of extraordinary, not because Sreenivasan could be described as a management guru, but because his films were living case studies of India's economic realities.

Sreenivasan, who left us, was never really an actor or a screenwriter. He was much more-a keen observer of life in India, especially of the middle-class experience, the unemployed, the small businessman, and the worker between aspiration and an often unwilling system. His films never romanticised struggle or reduced it to the tragic. Instead, they held up a mirror to society, making us laugh first, and only afterwards, reflect, almost instinctively, why we had found the joke uncomfortable. At IIM Bangalore, especially in the BBA in Digital Business and Entrepreneurship curriculum, this has been institutionalised as a form of experiential learning, as relevant, or perhaps even more so, than many case studies.

At business schools, students are taught to break down market failures, evaluate regulatory hurdles, and discuss union relationships in an organised manner. These ideas are normally introduced through global cases, which are normally based on Western business environments. However, for a whole generation of Malayali audiences, concepts like these were first introduced not through textbooks but through the stories of Sreenivasan. His films were documentations of how it was to begin small in a system that was against the individual, of how it was to deal without leverage in a world of power struggles, of how it was to survive when ideals clashed with reality. Even before entrepreneurship was a fashionable idea, it was already a reality in his films.

Let us take Varavelpu, which dates back to 1989. This is described by IIM Bangalore as "Market Entry Barriers and Managing Stakeholders." There is Murali, who has just returned from the Gulf with money and visions to start an operation in transport. He has it all. He has money, market, and motive. He lacks, however, any plan to handle trade unions, political pressures, and vested interests. The bus, or "the product," is, in fact, ready. The environment, however, is far from being conducive. With strikes and threats, he has no other alternative but to take over and operate the bus himself, thereby gradually burying his entrepreneurial ambitions. This is stakeholder theory as it is, for management enthusiasts, where, instead of places in boardrooms, it is ground and trade union offices.

Midhunam, released in the year 1993, also imparts another valuable insight, this time related to red tape and regulatory Holocaust. Dakshayani Biscuits, Sethumadhavan's biscuit factory, stands for all the nascent Indian companies that waste calories on red tape rather than products. It's not the action-packed sequences that are most chilling, but the mounds of files, the endless rounds to the office, and the gradual extinguishing of hope that constitute the greatest fears. It seems that the tribute to the IIM Bangalore ceremony intends to point towards the fact that when passion might fuel entrepreneurs, the engine might drive the process, and the lack of the engine might make the aspiring entrepreneur permanently stalled. Sethumadhavan, to all the young entrepreneurs fighting their way through the process of licenses and approvals, might not seem like a fictional protagonist; rather, he seems like a peer.

There is perhaps no movie that ever did so much to signify the human experience of inefficient systems better than the "road roller scene" from Sreenivasan's screenwriting experience during the end of the '80s, later adapted into the Hindi movie "Khatta Meetha." The machine, fixed and ridiculously uncooperative, symbolically represents sunk and dead investments. Expenditure has already taken place, labour has already invested, and the only thing that is not possible is making further progress due to the existence of inefficient systems. Efficient management practices always teach students of the subject ways on how to spot potential "bottlenecks" and avoid "white elephants." Sreenivasan demonstrated one of these messages through his movie experience.

Sreenivasan's brilliance was in his ability to present such observations at the political level without sacrificing the warmth of the information at the personal scale. In the Sandesham series, which examined ideological struggle and political fixation, Sreenivasan cautioned against political elites so mired in macro politics as to neglect micro-politics in their own environment. In the classic example of the talk on global politics, marked by the "Don't utter a word about Poland" exchange, this comes true as the home economy spirals out of control in the background. The interpretation of the IIM Bangalore School is an early introduction into PESTLE analysis, where political savvy can never substitute the need for day-to-day implementation.

But when the creative economy grew in size, the issue of intellectual property became paramount, Sreenivasan appearing to be ahead of the curve once more. In Udayananu Tharam, the actor made the character build his reputation through the theft of a script, distinguishing the skilled from the property. This, when the issue of intellectual property rights and monetising content became the topic of discussion, had been long dealt with, pointing out the repercussions of the lack of intellectual property protection, where others can capitalise on one's hard work. Sreenivasan did not spell out what he wanted, but the effect left the viewer to form their own impressions.

Globalisation was also given an improbable chronicler in Sreenivasan. In his movie series on the conditions faced by the Malayali workers in the Gulf, what is explored is the conflict between ideology and the need to adapt. The characters pinned down to strict ideological convictions are then saddled with the task of dealing with environments in the Gulf states that can only be defined as hyper-capitalist, where one had to be nimble to survive. The market, as his tales again and again make clear, is not in the least bit interested in individual philosophies - what it is interested in is value.

One of the most interesting reinterpretations that IIM Bangalore has given is that of the movie Traffic, where Sreenivasan had a pivotal role. Sometimes classified under medical thrillers, this tribute has a way of interpreting it all into a case study of operations and crisis management. The heart that must be transported, therefore, is the product, whereas the interest lies in the notion of logistics and timelines. Physicians and superstars take a backseat, and it is the optimisation and efficiency of the supply chain that is the real hero. In a world that is absolutely obsessed with everything that happens over the final mile, this interpretation seems vastly relevant.

Sreenivasan was also writing about the "informal economy" and the gig mentality before such economies were formalised into platforms. Later on, he wrote about protagonists who identified with available work that didn't involve shortcuts so much as developing their skills and preserving their dignity through mere survival. Against the backdrop of "get rich quick" ideas, such writing promoted sustainable growth that was rooted in competency rather than advertising hype. Such advice is valuable to students engaging a world of freelancing and uncertainty.