Panchayat S04

When the first season of Panchayat was released on Prime Video back in 2020, it brought the simplistic village life to our screens in the cities. At a time when the nation was binge-watching a lot of content on the OTT space, thanks to the forced lockdown during the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown, the story of Phulera Village and its people felt like a breath of fresh air. From the reluctant, MBA aspirant Abhishek Tripathi or Sachivji finding home among the people of Phulera, to Pradhan and his family, to Vikas and Prahlad Cha- Panchayat’s characters felt unique yet very rea,l and people sitting in the comforts of their homes could resonate with their simple, often humorous village life. The success of the show ensured more seasons, which led to the greater exploration of each of the characters-with a romance track thrown in the third season between Sachivji and Rinki, the Panchayat head’s daughter. In its fourth season, the characters remain but Phulera has been infiltrated with politics as Panchayat Elections are round the corner and as it happens in most cases- politics ruins and corrupts the simplicity of Phulera here too, making Panchayat Season 4 a drab in comparison to its previous series.

On our school’s Sports Day, the inter-house cycle race — especially after the success of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar — would be the most anticipated event. Excited students would line up the oblong track an hour in advance. It was a weekend finale of sorts; everyone wondered who the new ‘Sanju’ would be. It was all about the need for speed. But my favourite event was a relatively unheralded one: the slow-cycling race. I enjoyed the skill and balance required to reach the finish line last without stopping. The best of them would find ways to crawl, manage motion, and make the most of the track — a minute-long nutshell of life itself.

There is comfort in familiarity, but there is also fatigue. Season 4 of Panchayat is a stark example of the same. Operating within the confines of Phulera — the tiny hamlet somewhere in North India whose nooks and corners now feel like home — Panchayat 4 reintroduces us to its quirky bunch of characters who have increasingly become like family. But while there is a certain delight in getting back to the people and places that have become part of our lives over the last four seasons, the lack of momentum this time around does compel us to feel that Panchayat has run its course. In an OTT age dominated by blood and gore and twisted relationship dramas, the advent of Panchayat five years ago felt like a breath of fresh air. That it arrived during the pandemic — a time of uncertainty where we were clutching on to anything that felt even remotely comforting — made this series an instant clutter-breaker and, by extension, a bona fide hit strong enough to spawn a few seasons. But what started as a delightful fish-out-of-water story of a young man (Abhishek Tripathi, played by Jitendra Kumar aka Jeetu) who takes up the low-paying job of a panchayat secretary as a stop-gap arrangement before he gets back to the big city to pursue his dreams, but gradually learns to warm to its eclectic residents, has now completely shifted focus to the petty (and both funny and unfunny) politics in Phulera.

The tough part about the fourth season of a popular series is the fear of ambience fatigue defeating the charm of what began five years ago. Additionally, it’s election time in Phulera, the village where government official Abhishek Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar) has settled down comfortably as the Sachivji (panchayat secretary). It’s therefore daunting for directors Deepak Kumar Mishra and Akshat Vijaywargiya and writer Chandan Kumar to keep the appeal alive especially when politics at any level is awash with the familiar. Between Pradhanji Brijbhushan Dubey (Raghubir Yadav) alongside wife Manjudevi (Neena Gupta) and the rival camp led by Bhushan (Durgesh Kumar) with his wife Krantidevi (Sunita Rajwar), the campaign gets ugly. One-upmanship over cleaning campaigns, restoring electricity, trading seva-meva charges and ego tiffs over laddoos and kachoris are strewn all over the campaign trail. In the fray are also political godfathers, coteries of loyalists and regime change upsets. Sympathy votes and politicising a son’s death are disturbing realities. “But it’s all a part of politics,” Pradhanji periodically reminds everyone.