Weaving fiction through reality

The following is an excerpt from the interview with Chandan Kumar, writer of ‘Panchayat’ season 1 and 2 (streaming on Amazon Prime Video), and Sweksha Bhagat, screenwriter and teacher.

To start with, why Panchayat? If the idea was about a reluctant city boy coming into the village and experiencing life, in that case, it could have been a medical student coming for rural posting, but you chose a political set-up. Why?

To be honest, I found the world of local politics unexplored and full of possibilities. Even though I studied in Patna, I have been visiting my ancestral home in the village since childhood. I have closely seen how people live there, how they deal with conflict in their everyday lives, and how politics at the grassroots level comes with its own unique challenges which can only be understood when we look at things from their perspective. This ‘perspective’ is what I wanted to share through the series.

Can you talk about the process – did you go to a district or a village to understand the situational chaos and its underlying dynamics?

Some of the things were known to me because of my early visits to my own village. But to understand the dynamics of Pradhan (village council president), Up-Pradhan (vice-president of village council), Sachiv (panchayat secretary), I looked up the numbers of these people available through government websites and called them up. Some of them were forthcoming and shared their experiences quite candidly. The others were hesitant and almost scared to talk to an unknown guy sitting in Mumbai, asking how they worked or what challenges they are facing in implementing some government scheme.

Like getting toilets made for Swach Bharat Abhiyaan and the Pradhan himself defecating in an open field?

(Laughs) or getting a slogan conceptualized by creative people sitting in Delhi or Mumbai painted on the walls of someone’s house and hurting their sentiments!

So, these were inspired from real conversations?

Most of the writing comes from personal observations or shared experiences and anecdotes. My uncle who has a government job would also talk about how it is difficult to get work done around egocentric people, how the red tape delays execution, and how one must keep in mind the sociocultural mindset of people while working at the grassroots level. These conversations helped me in fleshing out realistic characters for the story.

Speaking of realistic representation, you have broken the rule of dramatic storytelling by not having a clearly defined villain, at least in season 1. What was your reason for doing so?

In the first season, we wanted to keep the situation as a villain. Abhishek’s goal is to study in peace and eventually get out of the village. However, the situation around him, be it the lack of a streetlamp or comfortable chair, or the theft of a monitor stops him from doing so. But we knew that once season one is over, these things won’t be enough as the character has grown enough to ‘deal with the circumstances.’ Hence, we brought in Bhushan and MLA as antagonistic forces in season 2. Even they are not written like conventional villains who walk around with guns and are out there to harm the hero. Bhushan represents someone from the same village who has had an ego clash with Pradhan and now wants to make life difficult for him. The MLA is someone who does not come from the same village and is therefore disconnected from the struggles of that panchayat. Again, rather than people being wrong, they create circumstances that are an obstacle for the hero.

This issue of ‘Seminar’ is focused on the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts, which also talks about women’s reservations. Panchayat picks up this with Manju Devi. Can you tell us about how you conceived her? Why was it important for you to show that she is a ‘pradhan’ only in name and everything else is run by her husband?

Reservation is one step towards the right direction. It is the first step of becoming a rubber stamp which allows you to at least think about people’s problems, go beyond your family’s thinking and start enjoying power. And women who are elected multiple times, get exposure little by little which enables them to engage in little capacities and build their network, and their own political capital.

If you think of the backstory, how would have Manju Devi won the election? It would have been because her husband has been a Pradhan for years before her. Any person who has power does not want to let go of it. So, when that seat got reserved, it would have been natural for Pradhan ji to nominate his wife, and the villagers would have voted for her because of what he has done for them. Having said that, once a woman steps out of her comfort zone when she is faced with challenges like singing Jan Gan Man in front of the DM in our case, Manju Devi rises to the occasion and finds her voice.

So, Manju Devi’s character grows in the second season where in Episode 1 itself Abhishek insists that Manju Devi bargains with the contractor for soil at the pond digging site instead of Pradhan since she’s very blunt and a better negotiator. Not just that in the last episode, she is the one who tells the MLA to leave the village and not make a political agenda out of a personal loss.

And what about her daughter Rinky? She is at the cusp of city vs Village life and represents the young women who leave their small town for education. Many of them don’t want to come back to their village, but she does.

It is not that Rinky went to a big city for her education. She would have gone to a private school near the village and then graduated through distance learning. Her exposure is very limited, which is why she feels that marriage is the next obvious step for her.

So, she will just be a ‘romantic interest’? or can we hope to see her becoming a ‘yuva neta’ in the upcoming seasons?

Currently, she is serving that purpose in the story. Moving forward, we do plan to give her own ambition, struggle, and arc. But would it have anything to do with Panchayat and politics remains to be seen.

Caste dynamics at the grassroots level is an essential issue that one cannot escape, yet the show hasn’t centred any direct conflict around it.

We may be indirect, but it is not that we have not touched upon it. When you visit villages in UP, Bihar, Haryana, and Punjab you do come across places where the entire village is inhabited by people of one caste – jaaton ka gaav, yaadavo ka gaav as they say. In Panchayat also, everyone is of the same/similar caste, and people have pointed it out during various interactions. The audience can see it, notice, and react to it, because as creators we made the deliberate choice of keeping everyone from the same caste. In the upcoming seasons, we will try to add a bit more about class divide too, which I feel is very much intermingled with the caste divide issue.

Can you please elaborate on that?

I have tried to touch upon it through the character of Vinod. In season 2 episode 3 climax, Pradhan ji had an issue with lower caste Vinod using his toilet. Do you think he would have an issue if Vinod was a lower caste but an affluent senior government officer? I don’t think so.

Panchayat is a comedy-drama, but touches upon serious issues like reservation, caste divide, class divide, but I personally like the way you deal with corruption. Your protagonist uses government property for his personal use, and you made it seem ‘so normal’.

(Smiles) Yes, to think of it, it’s a very corrupt thing to do! Not just that, Abhishek insists on getting a solar light right in front of the office so that he can study at night. Even the Pradhan has put the solar light near his own and his relative’s home.

For that matter, the exchange of Lauki and milk between him and Sachiv ji.

That’s how it is in the real world. When I spoke to the Pradhans and Sachiv’s for research, I realized how close their association is! The personal and professional boundaries are quite blurred when it comes to village life, and I wanted to create something wherein if you extrapolate the dramatic situation, you will understand what is going on, without me force-feeding the audience.

But the MLA is quite direct in his demands. He has an apparent negative shade to him, unlike others. Is it because he is higher up in the system?

Not entirely. Dramatically, when you make people from same village stand against each other, it still doesn’t give you the kind of heightened tension that an MLA, an outsider from another village, more powerful in terms of resources, capital, and power hierarchy than the Pradhan or Sachiv can do. Unlike Pradhan ji, he doesn’t have to be ‘nice’ to the villagers. This is the reason he comes across as out an out villain right now, but you might see a different shade of him going forward.

Interesting! So, can one expect guns and violence like in Mirzapur or Jamtara?

Well, there are real life Pradhans who walk in with guns and gunmen, and in fact in season 1, when Abhishek gets into a fight with the locals, I was tempted to make one of them fire a katta. But then, better sense prevailed, and I decided that if I would use violence, it would be for something big! It is said that one should kill a character when his death would have more impact than his life.

Ah! So that’s why Up-Pradhan’s son dies at the end of Season 2. Speaking of this track, my personal favourite is a scene where the junior reporter asks his superior – ‘Sir, fauj me sipahi rank me zyadatar ladke toh ye gaav dehaat ke hi rehte honge’ (Sir, the sepoy rank boys must be coming from the rural areas) and the senior officer replies... ‘bees tees hazaar mein jaan dene wale aur kahaan milenge’ (where else will you get who are ready to die for 20-30 thousand salary).

Thank you for noticing and remembering that. Again, while writing our intention is not to bring such plots for the sake of it. We want to create an emotional experience that makes the audience feel for the characters as closely as possible. If while doing so, we can weave in some facts and help in building a perspective, it’s a bonus.

One last question, how has writing Panchayat changed your perspective on politics?

How power is distributed in a village makes me curious, primarily through Panchayat as a mechanism. It is about making the local, village people feel that they have some power in hand to do something and be a part of the system which doesn’t isolate them from dreaming of making some difference. It is also important to acknowledge how personal emotions and ambitions drive politics.

I hope that as our show gets to the finale, people should appreciate local democracy, and power decentralization, and not look at villages with various filters. They are people with the same aspirations as us, dreaming of good housing and decent jobs that eventually lead to a better life.