Vijayawada, India – As soon as Meda Ramana was elected the head of Garapadu village council in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, several residents complained to her of being wrongfully excluded from government welfare schemes.
About 50 villagers – mostly women of the Dalit, Indigenous and religious-minority communities – told her in early 2021 that their annual welfare benefits, of 10,000 rupees ($119) to 120,000 rupees ($1,430), under various schemes, had been abruptly stopped by the state government.
