<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/indian-village-leader-viral-explainer-videos/>
"In December 2025, 20-year-old Gamit Vipul chanced upon something interesting
while doing what people his age do across the world: scrolling through reels on
Instagram. It was a short video made by someone who lived barely seven miles
from his village, detailing a government pension scheme available for people
with disabilities. Vipul, a farmer’s son who was born with a motor disability,
realized he was eligible, but had no clue how to apply.
“So I contacted the maker of the reel, Ripinbhai, and he helped me apply for
it,” he says. “Within two months, I started receiving Rs 1000 [about $10] and
am using the money to buy books to prepare for a qualifying examination for a
job in the Indian Railways.”
Flour mill operator Gamit Mayank, 40, shares a similar story. “Our village is
near a deep jungle, and so remote that sometimes I feel like I’m living on an
island!” he says. “The reel made me realize I was eligible for pension, but
without Ripinbhai’s help I’d never have been able to apply for it.”
While Vipul and Mayank managed to access welfare they were entitled to, many
others are not so lucky. India’s welfare ecosystem is designed to support the
most vulnerable through housing schemes, pensions, education subsidies and
livelihood programs. But entitlements often fail to translate into access. A
2023 audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India found that barely 32
percent of funds released for construction workers’ welfare in Gujarat were
actually utilized. In fact, across the country, there is a persistent pattern
of under-utilization of central welfare funds, ranging from centrally sponsored
welfare schemes, where states spent less than 40 percent of allocations, to
social justice funds, where up to a quarter of budgets remain unused.
“Lack of information, lack of awareness, is definitely a huge reason for this
[under-utilization of welfare schemes],” says Saswata Biswas, dean of the
Institute of Rural Management in Anand (IRMA), Gujarat. “While many villagers
are actually quite clued in about the types of schemes available, few know if
they’re eligible to access them, and even fewer know exactly how to access
them.”
This is exactly what 33-year-old Gamit Ripin encountered when he was elected
the sarpanch (village head) of Chikalda, in Gujarat’s Tapi district in western
India in 2022. A member of the Gamit tribe, Indigenous to Gujarat, he
discovered that many in his village had no idea that they were eligible for
government welfare schemes. “And those who did,” he says, “were too confused by
the bureaucratic language of the schemes to know how to apply for them!”
Traditionally, people in his village and indeed, across most of rural India,
relied on intermediaries to decode government schemes: local officials,
word-of-mouth networks, government outreach sessions and e-mitras (commercial
operators who assist people with digital issues for a small fee). But these
methods were not effective in Tapi, almost 200 miles away from the state
capital of Ahmedabad.
Ripin began holding outreach sessions in Chikalda, but these benefited only
those who made time to attend. “I realized how big a problem this lack of
information was,” he says. So instead, he decided to meet people where they
were: on social media."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
