Protector of India's tribal rights in fight to the finish

It is difficult not to like Dayamani Barla. Even if you disagree with her, she has a warmth and passion that make people sit up and take notice. Hers is a battle to be fought and won, or to die trying.

'We have two choices. One is to join the criminals, the politicians and ArcelorMittal [AM], and to keep our mouths shut and do what they say, or to fight this. To fight and to die, that's better. To die this way than live like the other. We will die fighting,' Ms Barla, 44, says with typical passion.

AM, the world's largest steelmaker, is the focus of her rage. The company wants to buy 3,240 hectares of land to build a US$10 billion steel plant in the mineral-rich east Indian state of Jharkhand. If it goes ahead thousands of farmers, mainly from India's Adivasi - or tribal - communities, will lose their ancestral homes, farm and forest land.

The mass displacement is something Ms Barla, who has won awards for her activism, is determined to stall.

'ArcelorMittal are cheats. They want to sneak in. They said they want 10 villages. Then they'll want water. And also, because they need water, they would have to dam a river. Wherever the dam is built another 20 villages would be displaced. They don't tell you that. They are trying to make fools of us,' she says.

Born in the Jharkhand village of Arhara, Ms Barla was the only daughter and youngest child of Adivasi farmers Jura and Hisaya Barla. The family, from the Munda tribe of Adivasis, had its own 2.5-hectare plot of land to grow rice and vegetables. But when she was eight years old her illiterate parents were deceived into signing over the rights to their land to a local businessman.