How do you stop a tree from chasing after people? It's not a riddle. It's a workplace challenge facing Abhishek Tripathi, after he reluctantly takes a job as village secretary in Phulera, a small town in Uttar Pradesh.
He soon faces a local government crisis -- involving the aforementioned tree and the question of where to position 13 new solar-powered streetlights that Phulera has reeived.
The town suffers from nightly blackouts, and Mr Abhishek proposes installing the lights in Phulera darkest areas. But 12 elected officials -- including the village pradhan (council leader) and his deputy -- instead put lights next to their personal residences.
Mr Abhishek claims the 13th and final light for the village hall, where he works, sleeps, and studies for MBA exams that could take him back to the city. But the pradhan orders the light instead be placed in front of a haunted banyan tree that villagers claim is chasing after them.
After Mr Abhishek protests, the pradhan tells him he can only get the light if he can rid the tree of the ghost.
Such confounding conundrums are the stuff of village democracy everywhere -- and perfect fodder for the most accurate show about local governance ever made.
Mr Abhishek is the leading character of the Hindi-language comedy Panchayat. A hit in India, the show's fifth season is expected to arrive on Amazon Prime Video later this year. Panchayat has attracted a strong following across the Global South, especially among local officials. If you find yourself in an unfamiliar city hall far from home, mentioning the show can be a good icebreaker.
Mahatma Gandhi famously envisioned India as a collection of village republics, self-sufficient and non-hierarchical, and argued that individual freedom could only be maintained in autonomous communities where everyone participated. In 1992, India sought to realise Gandhi's vision by amending its constitution to create 250,000 village democracies.
Panchayat, literally meaning "assembly of five", refers to the small council that runs a village, the most basic unit of governance in India. Panchayat the show, a comedy, suggests that Gandhi was right about the importance of empowering the village, but too optimistic about the non-hierarchical part.
"How power is distributed in a village makes me curious," Panchayat creator Chandan Kumar, who grew up in a village, told an interviewer. "The personal and professional boundaries are quite blurred."
That blurring, a recurring theme of the show, turns trivial moments into big drama.
In one episode, after Mr Abhishek gets CCTV cameras installed around Phulera, a farmer uses the recordings to find a missing goat, and inadvertently exposes a possible crime by a local insider. In another, Mr Abhishek buys a comfy rotating office chair that makes the pradhan feel diminished. If the secretary has a better seat than his elected boss, who is really in charge?
Panchayat doesn't shy from ugly real-life issues like public health and sanitation. The show also ably explores the gap between policy and implementation. A car promoting an anti-drinking campaign comes to the village, but runs into trouble when officials realise the driver is very drunk. A family planning slogan painted on a wall ("two children are as sweet as pudding, more than that can be as painful as piles") offends the family with six children living next to the sign.
The show also portrays the "pradhan-pati" system, through which men lay claim to local government seats reserved for women. In Phulera, Manju Devi is the elected pradhan, but her husband, Brij Bhushan, runs meetings, signs papers, and wears the title. But over time, events draw Manju Devi meaningfully into government, and she proves more politically skillful than her husband.
In its home country, Panchayat has inspired academic papers and media commentary, especially about the ability of villagers to self-govern. The national government has used the cast to promote a digital accounting portal to real-life village officials.
But Panchayat is most instructive at the local level. To stop the haunted banyan, Mr Abhishek painstakingly traces how villagers came to believe that a tree was chasing people. He tracks misinformation to Master Ji, a village teacher, who claimed 14 years previously that the tree was following him.
The teacher admits that he had been smoking weed that night. Even with this confession in hand, Mr Abhishek can't quiet the tree rumours. So, he has another local official sleep under the tree to show it is not haunted.
Misinformation dispelled, the village secretary soon has his solar-powered light. Zócalo Public Square
Joe Mathews is founder-publisher at Democracy Local and columnist for Zócalo Public Square.
