Sankalp

Revenge is the name of the game… well, in most crime thrillers. ‘Sankalp’ by Prakash Jha opens with a couple of bodies arriving at the gurukul run by Maat Saab (Nana Patekar). Before we learn who died and at whose hands, we are taken back to the unfolding of events six months earlier. Bit by bit, we grasp who Maat Saab is and how he derives his power. Bureaucracy in India is the bulwark through which the veins of power run and control the system. What better way than to infiltrate this very nerve centre with an army of loyalists? He picks up boys and girls from underprivileged backgrounds, educates them and trains them to crack the UPSC examination. Voila, a team of exceptional men and women in positions of extreme privilege within the civil services (from IAS to IPS to IRS) are ready to do his bidding.

A rare filmmaker who understands the pulse of heartland politics, Prakash Jha returns this week to his Raajneeti universe along the Ganga with a flawed yet engaging take on benevolence. The series Sankalp stands out for its intellectual ambitions and strong performances. It succeeds as a reflective political drama rooted in moral ambiguity, but its bloated narrative structure and lack of visual innovation prevent it from becoming addictive. In an era of flashy spectacles, Jha sticks to a traditional, issue-driven style, prioritising realism and complexity, though some methods of portraying power corridors and the dynamics between kingmakers and rebellious disciples now feel clichéd in the series format.

Some shows are so long and expansive that they become like senior family members — you don’t know if you like or dislike them because you’re inherently attached to them. Especially if nearly 500 minutes are consumed in one day, for professional reasons. Sankalp is (finally) over, but I have to be honest: I find myself missing how talkative and busy and overbearing and old-fashioned it was. I’m not sure what to do with my time anymore. There’s a certain sort of antiquity to a Prakash Jha directorial in this age: a narrative that’s about politics without being political, a potboiler about grassroots power and wise teachers and manipulative king-makers and faithful students, a traditional assortment of characters with shifting allegiances, mythology-fuelled dialogue, a chessboard that’s supposed to convey mind-games and twisty moves and metaphorical pawns. Even when I wasn’t paying attention to one of its 15 subplots, I grew to respect the scale. It’s not peak storytelling, but it’s the kind of committed mid-tier entertainment that reclaims the genre from the algorithmic clutches of modern streaming. In short, Sankalp is watchable because it doesn’t pretend to pander.