Shiksha Mandal is a crime-thriller TV series written and directed by Syed Ahmad Afzal and stars Gauahar Khan, Gulshan Devaiah, Pavan Raj Malhotra, Rajendra Sethi, Iram Badar Khan, Shivani Singh, Jaihind Kumar, and Ramkrishan Dhakad, alongside other cast members. The series has 9 episodes, each with a runtime of around 40 minutes.

MX Player describes the series as:

Based in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh the series will open your eyes to some of the filthiest dealings that take place in the name of education. Who do you go to seek justice, when everyone from the police to the ministers, from the clerks to the deans, is dancing to the tunes of money?

– Shiksha Mandal Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –

Shiksha Mandal starts with an interesting mystery – there are coaching centres, people appearing as others in exams, being in the limbo of maybe getting caught and the chaos that ensues when you get into something bad. Although at first you are left just a smidge confused, it picks up the pace soon enough, and you are left with an interesting story about, as MX Player puts it, the biggest education scam in history.

The Whistleblower did something similar in 2021, and MX Player’s 2022 series is packed with stuff happening in the education sector in Bhopal. It’s a mix of politicians, both up and coming and established, students and teachers who have something to get out of the pie that is the medical exams and the dark underbelly of the education sector.

We spend a lot of time figuring out Vidya’s disappearance, Aditya’s fight to understand where his sister is and how the different cogs are working behind a scam that destroys people’s lives systematically. The mystery goes so deep after a while that you feel lost in the number of stories, subplots and characters. Shiksha Mandal goes down the (almost) same road as The Whistleblower and sometimes feels a bit too familiar.

We have watched similar stories such as these multiple times, and with so many people trying to do so many things at the same time, it feels a bit too much after a while. The pacing goes up and down, sometimes feeling rather thrilling and edge-of-your-seat, while at other times, the story drones on and on for too long. You feel like skipping through these moments as you watch Aditya try to be a hero in a situation far greater than his understanding or watching Dhansu Yadav going on and on about his teaching centre.

Coming to Dhansu Yadav and the multitude of villains in the story, it feels almost comical to see how villainy some of these bad guys are. They feel like Disney baddies, with the overdramatic way dialogues, mannerisms and costumes that forcefully tell us that, yes, these are bad guys. All of it is just too much, to be very honest, and although I think Pawan Malhotra’s character was the most natural of the lot, the others are just too silly to be taken seriously.

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The interpersonal conflicts between the characters other than the villains, moreover, add drama that is forgotten a bit too easily. When we see them fighting over inane things and then promptly forgetting them in the next moment, you wonder what the point was of seeing it in the first place. They don’t solve these issues, and nor do they make sense in the long run. Sure, it adds some character depth, but, again, it doesn’t make much impact in the long run. It just unnecessarily pads the runtime and, personally, brings down the thrilling aspects of the story.

Shiksha Mandal, for all intents and purposes, is a very dramatic show. I think maybe that’s the problem with it. It feels extremely over-the-top, and although you want to believe Aditya to be this capable teacher who can fight off bad guys, it feels a bit much. No one can really get away from situations like these as simply as the tuition teacher does. Sadly, even the fight sequences are pretty silly and unbelievable.

Well, the series isn’t absolutely horrible, far from it. It’s an entertaining watch with strong performances from the leads. Gauhar Khan is really good, and so is Gulshan Devaiah, as always. The story is thrilling enough to keep you guessing, and you wonder what happens to our leads and whether they get justice in the end. It just doesn’t keep you as engrossed as you’d want it to.

Summing Up: Shiksha Mandal

Shiksha Mandal is a decent watch that goes down a similar path as The Whistleblower. The storyline isn’t as engrossing as you’d want it to be, thanks to its overdramatic nature and unnecessarily complicated plotlines. But it will keep you entertained and make you ask questions decently.

Shiksha Mandal is streaming on MX Player.

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