Pavitri Manjhi is taking a stand for land rights.
She is fighting against companies taking posession of ancestral land to make way for power plants. Her community's farms and livelihoods are at risk and many people have already been forced to sell their homes through fraud, coercion, and misinformatoin. Pavitri says these companies did not consult the communities and failed to get freely-given consent.
Pavitri is the elected head of her village council and helped found an organization that assists people in filing formal complaints around their rights to the land. She faces ongoing intimidation and threats of physical assault because of this work.
While she has reported this ongoing harassment to the police, they have taken little action. She is determined to help her community protect their ancestral lands.