Daya Bhai meets the Students of Philosophy at Don Bosco Seminary Aluva

Daya Bai (born Mercy Mathew) is an Indian social activist from Kerala, who worked
among the tribals of central India and has made Kasaragod her home now among the
victims of endosalphan pesticide. Mercy Mathew hails from a prosperous Christian
family in Pala, Kerala. She had a happy childhood with a strong faith in God. She
left Pala, Kerala 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 inspirational
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  struggle, 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 practices the theology
of liberation, settled down among the Gonds of Chindwara 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. She is now living in the north of Kerala among
the endosalphan victims. During her life presentation to the students of Philosophy and
the invited guests from the neighborhood Daya Bai enacted a solo presentation on the
effects of endosalphan and responded questions raised by the students. She was
simple and very inspiring.