Syed Ahmad Afzal wrote and directed the crime-thriller TV show Shiksha Mandal, which stars Gauahar Khan, Gulshan Devaiah, Pavan Raj Malhotra, and others.
Rajendra Sethi, Iram Badar Khan, Shivani Singh, Jaihind Kumar, and Ramkrishan Dhakad, alongside other cast members. There are 9 episodes, and each one lasts about 40 minutes.
Shiksha Mandal starts with an interesting mystery: there are coaching centers, people take exams as other people, they aren’t sure if they will get caught, and when they do, there is chaos. At first, it’s a little hard to follow, but the pace picks up quickly, and you’re left with an interesting story about what MX Player calls “the biggest education scam in history.”
In 2021, The Whistleblower did something similar, and MX Player’s 2022 series is full of things going on in Bhopal’s education system. It’s a mix of up-and-coming and established politicians, as well as students and teachers who want a piece of the medical exams and the dark side of the education sector.
We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what happened to Vidya, what Aditya is doing to find out where his sister is, and how the different parts of a scam that systematically destroys people’s lives work. After a while, there are so many stories, subplots, and characters that you get lost in the mystery. Shiksha Mandal follows (almost) the same path as The Whistleblower, which can make it feel a bit too familiar at times.
We’ve seen stories like this before, and after a while, it gets a little too much to see so many people trying to do so many things at the same time. The pace is all over the place. Sometimes the story is exciting and keeps you on the edge of your seat, while other times it drags on for too long. You want to skip over these parts when Aditya tries to be a hero in a situation he doesn’t fully understand or when Dhansu Yadav talks about his teaching center over and over again.
When it comes to Dhansu Yadav and the other bad guys in the story, it is almost funny to see how bad some of them are. They talk, act, and dress in a way that makes it clear that they are bad guys. They remind me of the villains in Disney movies. All of it is too much, to be honest, and even though I thought Pawan Malhotra’s character was the most natural, the others are just too silly to be taken seriously.
Also, the conflicts between the characters who aren’t the villains add drama that is sometimes easy to forget. When they fight over stupid things and then forget about them right away, it makes you wonder why you watched them fight in the first place. They don’t solve the problems, and in the long run, they don’t make sense either. Again, it gives the character some depth, but in the long run, it doesn’t change much. It just makes the movie longer than it needs to be and, in my opinion, makes the story less exciting.
Shiksha Mandal is a very dramatic show in every way that matters. I think that might be what’s wrong with it. It seems very exaggerated, and even though you want to believe that Aditya is a strong teacher who can fight off bad guys, it seems a bit much. No one can get out of these kinds of situations as easily as the tuition teacher. Even the fight scenes are pretty stupid and hard to believe.
Well, the series isn’t terrible, not even close. It’s fun to watch, and the main characters do a great job. As always, both Gauhar Khan and Gulshan Devaiah are very good. The story is exciting enough to keep you guessing, and you want to know what happens to the main characters and if they get what’s coming to them in the end. It just doesn’t keep you as engrossed as you’d want it to.
Shiksha Mandal is a good movie that follows a similar storyline to The Whistleblower. The plot isn’t as interesting as you’d like it to be because it’s too dramatic and has too many twists and turns. But it will make you laugh and make you ask good questions.
Many new movies and TV shows, like Halahal (2020), The Whistleblower (2021), and Crash Course (2022), are made-up versions of a real-life scam that was uncovered in Madhya Pradesh in 2013. “Shiksha Mandal” shows how the education mafia got a lot of kids into medical school by having fake people take the entrance exam. The story has many different parts that show how corruption, fraud, cheating, and criminal plotting affect weak students in India.
The story takes place in the cities of Madhya Pradesh, especially Bhopal and Indore, where there is probably a lot more pressure on young people to get into medical school and compete with each other than in big cities. This nine-part series starts with Aditya Rai (Gulshan Devaiah), who owns a coaching center for medical students, and his sister Vidya Rai (Iram Badar Khan), who is the best student at his institute. Even so, she is pretty worried about how she did on her entrance test. Vidya is taken away on the day of the announcement, and Rahul Somani (Gaurav Singh), the son of a well-known politician, is killed. Why is this happening, what is the link, and who is to blame? Every answer is hidden somewhere in the show.
The Special Task Force (STF), led by the tough and brave police officer Anuradha Singh Shrivastava, is quickly put in charge of this high-profile murder case (Gauahar Khan). Soon, she figures out that this is a lot more complicated than a simple murder or kidnapping case. On the other hand, Aditya stopped trusting the police and started looking for his sister on his own. During their investigation, they both find out that there is an exam mafia led by Dhansu Singh (Pavan Raj Malhotra) that traps smart students and forces them to write papers for weaker students. And everything is planned, from choosing the Engine-Bogie-Engine (their term for Smart Student-Weaker Student-Smart Student) seating arrangement for exam rooms to making fake answer sheets and paying off officials. The show is about whether Aditya and Anuradha can find Vidya and even bring down this dangerous gang to expose this education fraud.
The audience gets to see the kind of network that takes advantage of and takes advantage of smart students. This is one of the biggest cons in the country. “Shiksha Mandal” is very important because it shows how this society of questionable morals and wrongdoings has a lot to teach us. But writer and director Syed Ahmad Afzal doesn’t give the story the edge and polish it needs. At first glance, it looks like a complicated drama because there are so many characters and stories going on at the same time. The first few episodes don’t feel like they belong together because the editing is choppy and the screenplay isn’t consistent. Some of the series’ side stories, like Aditya’s relationship with Shivaani (Shivaani Singh) and Anuradha’s breakup with Sumeet (Suhaas Ahuja), don’t add much to the main plot. Finally, about halfway through, the show starts to pick up speed, which makes the plot more dramatic. After all of this buildup, the series ends on a cliffhanger, leaving room for the next season.
What does stand out is how well the cast does their parts. Gauahar Khan, who plays the tough and no-nonsense cop, does it with confidence and ease in every scene. It is without a doubt one of her best performances ever. Gulshan Devaiah’s intense act keeps you hooked. Iram Badar Khan does a great job as Vidya Rai, especially in scenes with a lot of emotion. Pavan Raj Malhotra plays Dhansu Yadav, a character with many shades of gray, very well. He has a good heart but is also willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of his dream. Rajendra Sethi as the crooked cop Jangal Singh, Kumar Saurabh as Dr. Nanhe, and Navdeep Singh as Akhtari move the story along.
All in all, the story and idea of “Shiksha Mandal…Biggest India’s Education Scam” give the familiar material new life and energy. It has a lot of potential, and if it had been done better and more consistently, it might have moved up to the next level. Even though it has problems, the show has enough to keep you interested.
Smart students, who are called “Rajus” by con artists in the education field, are picked out of every corner of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Their job is to take the hard medical school entrance exams for “dumb, stupid kids” on their behalf. This is the main point of the story. The rest of it is a good-hearted, but often disorganized, attempt to expose the elaborate scam behind this country’s shameful education mafia. Applaud the effort, but feel bad about how it was done.
Rahul Somani, written and directed by Syed Ahmad Afzal, has all the characteristics of a rich kid gone bad: he wears expensive clothes, shows off his wealth, and goes to parties where people don’t write their lines on whiteboards but instead snort them. But, to everyone’s surprise, he says, “I’ve never done nasha!” and ends up dying because of what’s on a pendrive.
In a not-so-distant future, Aditya Rai (Gulshan Devaiah), who has a bad temper, is furious that his sister skipped her entrance exams and had consensual sex with a teenage boy at Sharda Lodge. She is now being blackmailed because of her “bad” behavior. (Does this sound too familiar? We thought so, too.
Shiksha Mandal will go down in history as that piece of social commentary that was almost perfect but gave up at the last minute: almost well-researched, almost rebellious, and almost worth reading. It’s not the big moments that bring out the small flaws; it’s the small mistakes that make the show almost impossible to watch.
Aside from the important and very scary real-life lesson it tries to teach, Shiksha Mandal has a few talented actors who keep the story moving. Devaiah has done a great job as an angry man who wants to live out his own dreams through the younger group. Khan is also at home as a tough cop. After playing a lot of glamorous characters, Gauahar is such a nice change. As Dhansu Yadav, Pawan Malhotra is a hillbilly you’d love to hate. Other actors who jump from one scene to the next are hit or miss.
In short, Shiksha Mandal tells viewers that the real value of education isn’t measured by how well they do in school or which colleges they get into. However, it doesn’t do a good job of teaching.
After everything is said and done, the nine-part series tells a wise story. You have to watch it carefully to understand the “education mafia” that exists in some parts of the country and how this highly organized crime is done with help from the highest levels of government.