Amita Udgata

Urmi, a newly married young bride is left behind in the village with her in-laws, while her husband Arvind goes off to a job in the big city. Inder, her husband's cousin falls in love with her and proposes to her. Unable to deal with her husband's neglect and her in-laws nagging her for a child, Urmi escapes into a relationship with Inder. When the relationship comes out in the open, Urmi has to deal with not only the family's accusations but also her lover's cowardice. Declared guilty by the local village court, Urmi demands justice from a court made of all the village heads, where her husband's neglect and her lover's cowardice are revealed.

The amendment in the law, making it compulsory for one-third of the Gram Panchayat representatives to be women, is not received favourably by the ruling Sarpanch of the village, Thakur Ratan Singh. Although he puts up a front of being in favour of the idea, along with his son Inder Singh, he conspires to field wives of friends, whom he hopes he can control through their husbands and through the caste network. Vidya, wife of Bhanwar Singh who is indebted to the Thakur, is one of the newly elected women Panchayat members. Vidya, who is educated, notices that the political empowerment of women is only on paper and in reality decision-making still continues to be with the manipulative old guard. Vidya decides it is time for a change.

Les mensonges du coeur