STORY: Madam Chief Minister is a fictional account of the ups and downs in the life of a powerful Dalit leader, who goes on to become the first woman chief minister of India’s most populous and politically charged state Uttar Pradesh.
REVIEW: In a chilling opening scene, writer-director Subhash Kapoor shows us how a Dalit groom’s procession, ends up in a bloody shootout, just because it inconveniences a Thakur family. In the commotion that ensues, a poor Dalit man Roop Ram is killed, minutes before his wife delivers yet another girl child. This is Uttar Pradesh of 1982, where gender and caste discrimination are rampant and infanticide is a common practice.
Cut to 2005 and the girl child Tara (Richa Chadha) has grown up to become a fiery and hot-headed young lady, whose whirlwind affair with an upcoming politician, almost costs her, her life. Just then, a respected grass-root level Dalit leader Masterji (Saurabh Shukla) takes her under his wing and thus begins her journey into the murky world of politics and power.
Kapoor gives us a busy screenplay with myriad events and challenges in his protagonist’s life and this keeps the narrative flowing with unpredictable plot twists. Sure, some conflicts resolve too conveniently and some twists clearly seem implausible, but the fact that Tara’s character is so strikingly similar to UP’s former CM, we know that in politics, nothing is impossible.
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