Ashutosh certainly knows one fact that Ghar ka khana sabko accha lagta hain(Desi food is always preferred/liked by most over anything else) He/Aamir exploited that fact extensively in Lagaan but Ashutosh missed the bus this time without Aamir.

Where Lagaan was shrewdly crafted movie meant to touch/kick the pulse..Swadesh too has its few such moments but whats lacking here is "touching of soul" & "connection" throughout the film.It touches you in bits/pieces only & not entirely.

The premise is excellent (even better than Lagaan) but Ashutosh fails to capture the "essence" & loop it across the film.

The first thing which strikes consistently throughout is build up of all characters...Lagaan had achieved cent percent success in doing that.There was specific graph to each character properly sketched/defined.But in Swades apart from main characters all others have been not build-up properly especially Bavarchi...which could have been more detailed in terms of his passion to open Dhabba & his sudden decision to not to do so.

When Mohan returns to Delhi & intend to go to Charanpur village he can afford to taken a big van but later can't hire a Satellite phone for internet connection especially since hes working on imp Nasa project.(Satellite phone can work from any corner of globe) Gayatri's character sketch is excellent ...but her sudden outburst against Mohan for possession of Kaaveriaama is not defined...more so how on earth she comes to know in Delhi bookstore that Mohan is asking for village address to take Kaveriamma away! When Kaveriamma decides to send Mohan to another village to collect rent..Mohan feels/cries a lot for that guy...fine...but why didn't he feel same when he met a person in similar state (more or less) in charanpur itself?? this person is the one who argues that he is lower caste person hardly making money to feed one time meal for his family & hence doesn't wish to send his children to school....so why doesn't Mohan feel for this guy....coz his focus is on child gathering for School or coz he didn't enter this persons house & had a lunch with them ?? Despite all these minute errors the film creates a positive aura & a message which definitely will touch all.

All characters more or less have put in great efforts.

Kudos to Ashtosh for being the Manoj Kumar of this era.We sure hope there will be more gripping & soul feeding films from him soon.

P.S: Lagaan also had one factual error though....In that period there were no sixes...only fours in cricket books...So actually the match was lost !!