This satire revolves around a hapless 'Raja' Brij Singh Deo (Saurabh Shukla), who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that his days of glory are over. With his coffers empty and inability to look after himself, the Raja's only way out is sell his palace and his property. But there is a hitch. There are no takers because of the acute water scarcity in his part of the village. The other side of the village, where 'lower' caste people reside, has moved on with time and is flourishing because of their leader, Kharu (Gulshan Grover).

Kaun Kitney Paani Mein takes off with a narration by Raja Braj Singh Deo (Saurabh Shukla). It is a flashback chronicling the divide between two villages of the upper caste and royalty with those of the lower caste. The upper half of the village is ruled by upper caste people who are presently facing water problems while the lower caste villagers settled at the lower end and are the privileged ones with abundant water supply.

Set in 1985, the film is a satire on water crisis, caste discrimination and honour killing that plague a remote village in Odisha. While the 'upper caste' king exploits his hapless subjects, tables turn when the latter take control through their vision for agriculture and water conservation techniques.

Satire is a tricky genre to play with. If pulled off nicely, it leaves a huge impact on the audience. Director Nila Madhab Panda's Kaun Kitney Paani Mein gets the satire part bang on, but fails to keep pique our interest thanks to a confused screenplay. The film stars Radhika Apte, Kunal Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla and Gulshan Grover in the lead roles. So how does this village comedy play out in the big screen? Lets dive into a detailed review to find out if Kaun Kitney Paani Mein is worth watching or not.

Nila Madhab Panda burst on the Indian film scene with the critically acclaimed I Am Kalam in 2011. After briefly touching upon the issue of water shortage in his follow-up film Jalpari, the fillmaker's new film -- the Kunal Kapoor and Radhika Apte starrer satire Kaun Kitne Paani Mein -- revolves around water politics in a fictional Odisha village. The film opens with an honour killing where the king of a village (nestled in the hills) shoots his daughter and the low caste man she has fallen in love with, and banishes the man's poor family to the foothills of the village.

Kaun Kitney Paani Mein is based in a village in Odisha, where old values and prejudices face a drought and poverty. Raja Braj Kishore Singh Deo (Saurabh Shukla) owns a village that has no water. He lives in a palace but hasn't been able to pay his electricity bill for three years. Sozzled - he has to drink his whisky neat because there's no water - he tells his son, Raj (Kunal Kapoor), "Raja ki baat toh door, hum toh praja bhi nahi rahenge."

It is not the best of times for the fictional outposts of Upri and Bairi. The two villages, once part of the same kingdom, are now riven by a long-standing caste conflict. And by the lack of water, the only thing worth more than gold in a place which has run dry, where people use the precious liquid for barter, whether it is the weed-soaked pundit, or the lusty lady of the night.

I Am Kalam director Nila Madhab Panda's fourth outing Kaun Kitney Paani Mein makes a spirited but patchy drama built around a precious, fast depleting natural resource that sustains life on this planet. The film takes a cross-eyed look at the deepening water crisis and changing social order in rural India, specifically in a parched part of Odisha. It rains a flurry of blows on its chosen targets. However, not all of them find the sweet spot.

Water is important, and there are many ways to convey it to a film audience. You can go for a really serious documentary on conservation or you can weave a satirical story around the idea. If you're interested in a crash course on the latter, here's director Nila Madhab Panda's 110-minute film Kaun Kitney Paani Mein. To begin with, it's an intelligently executed film.