Daya Bai


Daya Bai is an Indian social activist from Kerala, working among the tribals of central India. She lives in Barul village of Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh.

Early life

Mercy Mathew, born in 1940, hails from a prosperous Christian family in Pala, Kerala. She had a happy childhood with a strong faith in God.

Social work

She left Pala at the age of 16 to become a nun, and later gave up her habit to work for the tribal population in the midlands of India. She has been delivering inspiriational speeches, holding satyagrahas and campaigns to press local authorities to open schools and empower neglected villages in the interior and tribal Madhya Pradesh. She was associated with Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Chengara agitation, apart from her solo struggles representing the forest dwellers and villagers in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. She also lent her services to the common folk in Bangladesh during the war there. Daya Bai, who practises the theology of liberation, settled down among the Gonds of Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh. She set up a school in the Barul village. Daya Bai teaches each village she visits how to take care of itself and then moves on to the next village.
She started the Swayam Sahayatha Group in the late 90s, as a tool for the eradication of poverty. This earned her the wrath of the middlemen, the money lenders and village chief. She asked female officers in the bank to use their position for the uplift of the downtrodden and the distressed poor.

Awards

Daya Bai received the Vanitha Woman of the Year award in 2007. She was awarded with the Good Samaritan National Award in January 2012.

Legacy

Ottayal or 'One Person,' is an hour-long documentary on Daya Bai by Shiny Jacob Benjamin. Nandita Das, the film personality, wrote a tribute to her in 2005, as the one inspiration of her life.