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.
Inspired by the Chanakya-Chandragupta dynamic, Sankalp follows Kanhaiyalal, popularly called Ma’at Saab (Nana Patekar), a revered guru in Patna who runs a gurukul-style school and an UPSC coaching centre, strategically grooming loyal students who rise to powerful bureaucratic positions to take on the entrenched, corrupt system.
Tensions escalate when his protégé, IPS officer Aditya Verma (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), begins to question his mentor’s manipulative methods amid a brewing political rivalry with Delhi’s Chief Minister, Prashant Singh (Sanjay Kapoor), and his strategist, Waqar (Neeraj Kabi).
As old betrayals, ideological clashes, and power struggles surface, a tense battle over loyalty, revenge, and control tests the limits of mentorship and ambition, revealing self-interest and politics in philanthropy.
Those who have watched Raajneeti would remember Patekar’s turn as a quiet strategist who holds command from behind the scenes. Jha, along with creator- writer Reshu Nath, seems to have built on this character to create the political puppeteer in Sankalp. It reminds one of Jayaprakash Narayan, who mentored a new generation of political leaders in the 1970s to take on the Congress, many of whom remain active in politics. Ma’at Saab does something similar in the bureaucracy as Jha reimagines political succession in a democracy where the laal batti of bureaucrats and technocrats is increasingly becoming the guiding light.
However, perhaps in a bid to play safe, Jha doesn’t allow his protagonist to aim big. He just wants to change the Delhi State government. It is a low-hanging fruit for a ten-episode series starring powerhouses such as Patekar, Ayub, and Kabi.
Moreover, after building a riveting world full of intrigue, some ordinary, if not lacklustre, writing disappoints. When Kapoor keeps asking what’s happening, with a popular pejorative sandwiched in between, he seems to be expressing the audience’s desperation at being stuck amid overcrowded, underdeveloped subplots.
The narrative stalls, with repetitive scenes that echo themes of power, loyalty, and manipulation but fail to advance the story. Twists are often inconsistent, and some character arcs are left underdeveloped or unresolved, contributing to a bloated rather than layered plot.
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What keeps one interested is the larger vision of depicting a world coated in shades of gray, where truth shifts with perspective. Dotted with both sharp and insipid dialogue (Chandan Kumar), the series avoids glossy escapism and questions society’s fascination with unquestioned influence and easy heroes or villains. It probes the parents’ role in the much-lauded gurukul model, with the female characters adding layers of loyalty, vulnerability, and consequence, even though they function more as enablers or quiet challengers than as autonomous forces.
Written with Patekar in mind, Sankalp benefits from the master actor’s magnetic presencer. Like a coiled spring, he brings out the quiet authority of Ma’at Saab while giving the audience a sense of menace and tyrannical instincts that such a personality holds beneath layers of calm and warmth.
Sankalp is currently streaming on Amazon MX Player
Published – March 12, 2026 04:15 pm IST
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