From the makers of Panchayat comes a variation of the urban-fish-in-rural-pond story. Gram Chikitsalay takes up the worthy cause of severely neglected rural health care.
In Panchayat, Abhishek reluctantly works as a village council’s secretary. In Gram Chikitsalay, Prabhat willingly relocates to the fictitious Bhatkandi hamlet in Jharkhand to serve as the medical officer at its public health centre.
Noble intent swiftly gives way to ignoble reality. Prabhat (Amol Parashar) encounters a broken set-up and individuals who treat his do-gooder act as a passing fancy, a source of entertainment even in a place where time moves slowly and nothing happens.
The health centre has barely any resources and staffers who should not be anywhere near a medical facility. Puthani (Anandeshwar Dwivedi) is a compounder of anything but medicine. Gobind (Akash Makhija) is a ward boy without a ward.
The quack Chetak (Vinay Pathak) is managing to treat Bhatkandi’s residents just fine. Only the nurse Indu (Garima Vikrant Singh) understands Prabhat’s importance.
Gram Chikitsalay has been created by Arunabh Kumar and Deepak Kumar Mishra, written by Vaibhav and Shreya, and directed by Rahul Pandey. The Hindi series comes in at five episodes, in what appears to be a truncated first season. Whatever is on display is a work in progress, just like Prabhat.
The idealistic doctor’s dilemmas closely resemble the initial struggles of Panchayat’s Abhishek. Gram Chikitsalay is set in an even more hopeless milieu, with Bhatkandi being more backward and hidebound than Panchayat’s Phulera.
But Gram Chikitsalay is barely engaging, bereft as it is of Panchayat’s strong writing and staging. It isn’t enough to surround the outsider hero with insiders who jabber away in vehemently colloquial Hindi and act out capitalised eccentricity.
The sincerity of the performances cannot compensate for slipshod writing and slack pacing. There’s an overall lack of conviction despite welcome detailing, especially in the way good intentions fail because of the absurdity of life in the Hindi heartland.
A sub-plot about a farmer who has a problem with the health centre’s location is grating, just as Prabhat’s run-in with rival politicians comes off as pointless. Prabhat himself is sketchy, having done no homework on what to expect and being unwilling to consult his more experienced peer (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor).
The importance of proper rural health care kicks in only in the final episode, but with a case that isn’t exactly Prabhat’s area of expertise. Like the booster injections that Chetak gives his patients, the meandering Gram Chikitsalay will need massive shots of imagination and focus if it has to get viewers over to Prabhat’s side.
