It feels like a scene straight out of an old Bollywood film—a stormy night, thunder rolling in the background, a woman crying out in labour, no doctor in sight. Then a neighbourhood “daayi” arrives, slips into the room, and, moments later, comes the announcement “Ladki hui hai” or “Ladka hua hai”.
What sounds cinematic is, ironically, still real in the national capital. Even as Generation Alpha and Beta are being born in an age of apps and AI, some of them are still taking their first breath at home, guided by the steady hands of traditional midwives.
In the narrow lanes and crowded settlements of Delhi, daayis continue to exist quietly, delivering babies and preserving a practice that modern hospitals were supposed to replace but never entirely did.
Into their lives
Seventy-five-year-old Sarwari Begum delivered a baby named Rehmat only four months ago in a kutcha house somewhere in the tight narrow lanes of Trilokpuri. Rehmat has seven other siblings aged 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5 and 3, and all of them were safely delivered by her.
“In the past four years, post-Covid, I have delivered 30–35 babies, with no complications and no injections required. All of them are natural births. Now I don’t go out much owing to my illness,” she said. Originally from Muradabad in Uttar Pradesh, Begum had three daughters and three sons, but only two of them survived. She lives with her three grandchildren and a daughter-in-law. To continue the legacy, she taught them the craft of delivering a baby, if not wholly the basics of the craft.
Another experienced hand
Bano, 62, from Himmatpuri in Trilokpuri, is another practising daayi who never learned to read or write and received no formal education. Yet, at the age of 35, she trained herself in traditional maternity care and has continued ever since. Popularly known as Bano Bi, she provides postnatal massages. She acts as a personal doctor to women who haven’t seen hospitals in their lives, guides them on suitable diets and encourages exercises depending on the month of pregnancy.
When asked what she does to induce labour pain, as doctors use gels and tablets to start contractions, she said, “We don’t do any such thing. We use castor oil and milk. A little bit of castor oil mixed in milk is given to a woman to drink, and soon a stool is passed and pain begins.
She added, “Since women getting babies delivered at home can’t afford cotton and towels, we have to use old bedsheets, two thick pillows beneath her back and sometimes cloth sacks. We don’t need instruments to deliver a baby. We need a pure soft cotton cloth to hold the baby’s head and pull it out. Hospital doctors will give you stitches even after normal delivery because they don’t wait for the natural pain; they have to make a cut to pull out the baby fast. We don’t do that. We bring out the baby without putting a cut on the vagina, and this is the reason no stitches are required.”
Talking about if she has seen complications in the cases and a woman needs an operation, Bano said, “In rare cases, complications do come up. These women are mostly domestic workers who work till the last day before their delivery unless there is unbearable pain. This is the reason they end up getting smooth deliveries at home.
Once everything is done, I call a nurse from the nearby hospital to inject the new mother and the baby. In rare cases when I feel it may go out of my hand, I urge them to go to the hospitals, but by then it becomes too late. The hospitals also don’t welcome pregnant women at the last stage for delivery if she didn’t get herself registered earlier. It becomes a problem, and we end up delivering the baby at home only.”
The other reality
Meanwhile, Geeta, an Asha Kiran worker who has seen daayis delivering babies in her locality, said, “I have seen several of them. Especially the domestic workers in the jhuggi jhopri areas avoid going to the hospitals and prefer home deliveries.
Geeta lives near the Samaypur Badli Metro station. She said, “My work is to convince these women to visit the hospital once. I reach out to them individually, talk to their families and tell them that home deliveries by daayis can be risky for both the mother and the baby. I am just a call away, and it requires a few minutes for me to take them to the hospital – this is what I have been doing for the past 20 years now.
Known affectionately as “Geeta Tayi”, she spent nearly seven exhausting hours on Friday assisting the delivery of her friend that turned complicated. By the time the baby cried, dawn was close. “We don’t watch the clock when a woman is in pain,” she said, still catching her breath, before preparing for the next call that could come any moment.
Explaining why many women in rural areas still choose home births over government hospitals, Geeta pointed to their everyday experiences. “Women tell me that when they are in labour, they are sometimes scolded or abused by the nursing staff. There is no dignity in giving birth in such an atmosphere. That is why they trust a daayi more than a hospital,” she said.
“Another reason is that these women have a mindset that hospital births are difficult, and when she’s in the hospital there will be no one to take care of her other kids. This is something that worries them all the time,” she added.
Roshni, a 32-year-old mother of eight, shared a stark yet painfully simple reason for avoiding hospital visits. She said there is often no one to accompany her. If an emergency happens at an odd hour, she has no one to take her. Her husband is usually away at work, and all her children were born while he was absent. Going to the hospital would also mean taking time off from work, which is not always possible. “Koi haspataal lejaane vala nahi hota; bewaqt jaana parjaye, kaun leke jayega? Mere saare bachche mere aadmi ke peeche huein hain; vo kaam pe rehte hain. Aur haspatal jaane ke liye kaam se chutti leni parti hai...”
The reporter tracked down another daayi in Okhla’s Shaheen Bagh, only to learn on arrival that she had died just 15 days earlier. The visit, however, revealed that her work had not ended with her passing. Before she died, the elderly midwife had trained her daughter-in-law in the same skills she had practised for decades. Today, it is the younger woman who moves through the lanes of the locality, responding to calls from pregnant women and offering the same care, carrying forward a quiet legacy of service from one generation to the next.
What experts and doctors say
Dr Sunita Tandulwadkar, president of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI), had a different perspective. She said, “India needs midwives considering the poor doctor-patient ratio. In the UK, they have highly trained midwives.
The government should ideally train the existent midwives such that deliveries can happen with an additional helping hand. With the advantages, there is a disadvantage too. The midwives may cross the alert line. In complicated cases also, they may not refer a baby to the hospital. This is the reason why the midwives need sophisticated training to handle the women, at least in the remote areas of the country.”
Dr Rashmi Singh, Secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development, Delhi, said, “Institutional deliveries are on the rise in the country, but still in some urban areas, this is happening. In this case, our Asha workers have been educating women, creating awareness about safer deliveries in hospitals.
Asha workers are responsible for identifying pregnant women early under the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), registering them, and facilitating the creation of a Mother and Child Protection Card. They help families plan for institutional delivery, including transportation, and offer them counselling.”
Professor Tulsi Patel, a retired sociology professor at Delhi University who has extensively worked on cultures of childbirth, said, “This issue of childbirths at home is a complicated issue in itself. There is no clear answer if this should be promoted or continued, but we can positively share examples from the modern countries, including the UK, Germany, Denmark and other countries also, where the midwives are respected.”
“In other countries, you need to score more to be a midwife than to be a doctor. Meanwhile the midwives there are paid the same amount as gynaecologists are paid,” she added.
She further said, “In India, the women who prefer home births instead of hospitals have nothing to do with the affordability because now the JSY has made it easier to assist a pregnant woman – from picking her up to dropping her back. The issue is that the women don’t want to be exposed in the hospitals.
They need that emotional touch with a particular person (daayi). In hospitals, ten nurses and staff keep looking at the patient, and the woman feels unsafe and uncomfortable in such an environment. They feel that the births should also be natural like menstruation unless certain medical intervention is required.”
What data suggests
According to the annual report on Registration of Births and Deaths in Delhi 2024, 61.40% of home births in 2023-24 were assisted only by relatives, neighbours, or untrained individuals—a sharp jump from virtually none in 2022-23.
The 2023-24 report shows that only 16.96% of home births were attended by a doctor, nurse, or trained midwife. Another 21.64% involved untrained midwives or traditional birth attendants, while the majority – 61.40% – were assisted solely by relatives or others or had no assistance recorded.
The contrast with the previous year is stark. In 2022-23, nearly all home births (99.68%) were attended by qualified medical staff, while just 0.30% involved untrained midwives, and virtually none was assisted solely by relatives.
The report also noted a decline in institutional deliveries, which fell to 294,464 in 2023-24 from 301,168 the previous year.