Standing under a starlit sky with the Old Rajinder Nagar air enveloping their frames, Sandeep Bhaiyya tells Abhilash in The Viral Fever’s (TVF) web series, Aspirants, “Power se bulb jal sakta hain aur power se log electrocute bhi ho sakte hain. You have to decide how you want to use power.” These telling words mouthed by the character played with dollops of restraint by Sunny Hinduja seem to form the backbone of all TVF productions. Especially in the way they have decided to showcase India, its people and their daily lives using scripts, narrative techniques, music, actors and cinematography that don’t alienate the audience even one bit.

While the stories and their execution could have been the usual diatribe against India and its culture that Left-oriented filmmakers and storytellers have been presenting for a while now, the success of works such as Panchayat, Kota Factory, Aspirants and Gullak testify how the audience is identifying with a changing, progressing India. In tandem with the political shift in the country’s ambience, the tone that is working for the mainstream OTT audience is a positive one, the language simple and the approach not dark or depressing. Which does not mean that Bharat’s flaws are not being talked about. But, there is no unnecessary magnification. There is ample usage of tongue-in-cheek humour without demonizing the system and most importantly India is depicted as is. That our country can be a happy place without the gloss of fake superficiality has been established.

it’s quite interesting how narratives have gradually shifted since the time the urban audience was regularly dished out a superfluity of sexual depravities, drug dosages and abusive parlance via web series such as Paatal Lok, Mirzapur, Rasbhari and the like. Scriptwriters fill every scene with excessive nudity, incestuous relationships in the garb of modernism and distasteful language that breached the very code of conduct and decorum that had become a norm on OTT platforms. Not to mention trigger happy rural civilians, corrupt law and order and machiavellian characters who stumped masses with their dissonance from the reality. This rabble-rousing about Bharat in the mind of urban Indians was earlier pushed by so-called ‘progressive arthouse cinema’. Since commercial cinema showed village life as vulgar and nonsense, arthouse cinema’s reply to it lay in grating reminders of casteism, sexual subjugation, exploitation by zamindars, oppression and an overall vocabulary of disgust and deplorable existence. This clearly was an agenda by the leftist minds to cut urban Indians from their roots, which has successfully happened, too. 

If we go back to the winter of 2003, the mainstream movie audience didn’t warm up to Mohan Bhargav trying to ‘rescue’ Charanpur from the clutches of rural underdevelopment, too, despite the project manager from NASA soldiering on to eradicate poverty, casteism, child labour and a host of other maladies from the fictitious village in Uttar Pradesh in Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Swades. Fabulous cinematography, great music by AR Rahman and liberal doses of ‘stark reality’ notwithstanding, Swades failed to do a Lagaan at the box office. Gowarikar’s take on the award-winning 2003 Kannada movie Chirugida Kanasu couldn’t connect with the masses. Perhaps, well into the 21st century while the Congress government had drained the country’s resources, the audience, too was fed up with soft powers using a derogatory brush to paint India as excessively downtrodden, backward and crippled with anarchy. This was not the mitti from the hinterlands they wanted a whiff of. Where a messiah of sorts was required to heal the village from social and economic malaise if not the Anurag Kashyapesque mafia raj! 

Maybe that is why the reception intended for the smart, uber-educated Bhargav was showered on an unassuming Abhishek Tripathi despite him being a disillusioned graduate, too, biding his time as the gram panchayat secretary of an Indian village who would love to flee Phulera once he pockets a secure management seat. Jitendra Kumar has done what King Khan couldn’t. Floor the audience. Maybe because he, rather Chandan Kumar, who scripted the extremely popular Amazon web series, didn’t paint him as a saviour. He made him one of us, real and grounded. Yes, there are teething problems in his wake as he tries to negotiate through the curious and whimsical actualities in the nondescript village the Indian government has sent him to but there is a sense of ‘I could be in his place’ plays in our mind as he takes it all in his stride. 

A sweeping sense of pragmatism hovers as Tripathi decides to assist the villagers as a government employee who is not even remotely interested in being a Godsent to deliver the downtrodden from penury. Hence, his character development is noteworthy, especially when he stands up to ‘banrakas’ Bhushan even as he learns to juggle Grameen politics the Phulera way. He gets angry and frustrated, too, but he comes around. It’s called dealing with life. As Sandeep Bhaiyya, Shwetketu and Abhilash in Aspirants prove that in the preparation of an important examination lies the very tenet of life. So, while Guri might believe, “you fake it till you make it” Tripathi’s experiences teach him that honesty and earnestness are the way forward, though a wee bit of diplomacy could come in handy. 

Fortunately, the Panchayat makers have sensed the pulse of today’s India, a country that is courting rapid change, finding a confident voice and moving ahead (an instance is the modern miracle of cell phone penetration and installation of CCTV cameras) even as they stick to a sustainable module of living. There are enough instances where while the villagers need government support, life isn’t about helplessness, drudgery, murders, rapes and violence. Like it wasn’t in Govind Moonis’s Nadiya Ke Paar, a delightful 1982 romance set in an eastern UP village, starring Sachin, Sadhana Singh and Inder Thakur. While most rural dramas in that era gratingly painted our villages as quicksand patches of cruelty meted by feudal lords (think Hum Paanch, Nishant) and evils committed against women (Mirch Masala was a visual delight, yes, but thoroughly projected rural India as a hub of monstrosity and patriarchy against women), here was a Rajshri production where a girl openly tells her father she won’t marry somebody because she loves his younger brother. It’s telling that the same sense of importance and freedom is given to Rinky in Deepak Kumar Mishra’s work. She is young, educated, drives a scooty and doesn’t hold back her opinions from her parents.

Phulera’s women seem pretty progressive as compared to the situation in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (remake of Nadiya ke Paar) where Tuffy, the pet dog communicates what a tongue-tied Nisha can’t! Twelve years after the original film was released, the Salman Khan Madhuri Dixit blockbuster seemed regressive that way. Maybe that’s why Manju Devi, the gram pradhan in Panchayat, is a welcome break. A grihalakshmi with better political instincts than her husband, she is an equal who is initially reluctant to take decisions as the elected village head but slowly gets out of her comfort zone to participate in important administrative matters when needed. With a feisty mind of her own, she doesn’t mince words while berating erring folks. She balances this toughness with a compassionate side, guarding her people when needed even as she puts elitist MLAs in their place.

Stories like Panchayat find favour because they glorify the power of a collective. Just like how Raghav Subbu and Saurabh Khanna’s Kota Factory (also by TVF) did. Here was a narration set in Kota, a small educational hub known for its coaching centres that were positive, fun and heartwarming. Tracing the journeys of youngsters like Vaibhav Pandey, Balmukund Meena and Vartika Ratawal aiming for the IITs guided by the practical but driven Jeetu Bhaiya, a cloak of familiarity ensconced the series. While the writing never evaded crucial issues of competition, parental pressure or coaching centre politics the genuineness in relating it stuck on. Biswa Kalyan Rath’s Lakhon Mein Ek though dealt with a similar topic, a negative, misleading and depressive cloud enveloped the tale. Kota Factory’s pull is its upbeat vibe, attention to technical detail and realistic characterisation. It doesn’t misguide or is not flaky (well, for that we have Zoya Akhtar’s upcoming The Archies) but the voice is inspiring, relatable and mirrors small-town dreams and aspirations perfectly. 

With viewers now eagerly waiting for the third season of Panchayat (Kota Factory, too), it’s evident that the ensemble cast of Kumar, Raghuvir Yadav, Chandan Roy and Neena Gupta has found their niche in the hearts of the audience as well as critics with their portrayal of characters who do not give up on basic decency and respect no matter how tough the going gets. The depiction of real rural Indian thoroughfare, emotions and politics, devoid of propaganda, has clearly struck a chord. Yes, some of Phulera’s roads still need mending, a handful of villagers are yet to get their personal toilets, a few still need to rid themselves of the urge to defecate in the open, the panchayat elections promise to be a crazy affair, but there is a curiosity to know how this place evolves under the aegis of Tripathi, his aide Vikas, Brij Bhushan Dubey and Prahlad Pandey. After years of being fed with distorted, demoralising narratives that showed humara desh in erroneous light, the audience is welcoming the wave of solution-based worldview taking over scripts in cinema. Aspirants, Kota Factory didn’t disappoint with their tangible, affirmative voices. So, why would Panchayat be any different!