With the polling day for the panchayat elections less than a week away, campaigning in Mahodiya village of Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore is in full swing. The village serves as the location for Panchayat, a popular web series on Amazon Prime that captures many aspects of rural politics through the eyes of its city-bred protagonist, the panchayat secretary.
A visit to the village suggests that many electoral issues for the June 25 polls resonate with the broad theme of the show, where it assumes the fictional identity of Phulera in Uttar Pradesh’s Baliya. There are also parallels between specific plot points in the script and the situation on the ground.