Recovering abandoned futures

Millions of children in India are in urgent need of care and support, but are the new ‘modern’ and ‘streamlined’ adoption laws and processes addressing the real problems?  

  

Nishank works as a researcher on issues of financial accountability of national and international institutions in one of New Delhi’s human rights NGOs. Hailing from the still growing small town of Ranchi, he studied engineering in Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) and SUNY Buffalo. Activism ran deep in Nishank’s mind. Starting from participation in company’s CSR events to volunteering for AID (Association for India’s Development), Nishank continues to be a restless organizer. Apart from creating and managing diverse social initiatives, 35 year old Nishank is proud of another brainchild of his that is now 10 years old. After a company sponsored CSR visit to an orphanage in Mysore for Diwali celebrations, Nishank started the People’s Group for Child Adoption in India, an 1100-1800 member strong group that connects through social media platforms as well as offline meet-ups across India’s prominent cities. 

Nishank begins by clearing the haze around issues of child adoption in India. “It is assumed that couples unable to bear a biological child are the first ones to go for adoption, but that is far from true. Many couples go for mixed families (biological+adopted), then there are couples who do not want to personally reproduce a child in order to have one (even if they are capable of that), plus there are single women and men who want to adopt children.” His statement already breaks down one of the first misconceptions that I had about child adoption. Before I can doubt his certainty, he quickly adds as a way of logic – “Couples who want a biological child don’t give up that easily. They go to every fertility clinic and even explore the option of surrogacy before committing to adoption, how can they be the first ones who go for adoption?” 

“But do generalizations such as these play a role in choosing ‘who gets adopted’?” I ask.  “Definitely, a number of couples who want to adopt a child specifically for transference of inheritance or property rights look for a male child,” Nishank replies. “And you must remember that 80-90% of abandoned children or orphans are girls”. His comment already makes our conversation take a grave turn. The Child Welfare Committee of every state in India has a 30-60 days waiting period for claiming the child depending on whether the child has been relinquished (30 days) or has been found abandoned (60 days). After that the unclaimed child is up for adoptions in one of the many ‘agencies’ that handle the adoption process in India. It is mandatory for these adoption agencies to be licensed by CARA – Central Adoption Resource Authority. 

Adoptive couples (couples who wish to adopt) have to sign up on CARA’s official website with original documents to be eligible for adopting a child. After sign-up, the waiting period is close to 1-2 years before the couple can finally get to meet a child, depending upon age group, gender and varies from state to state. The number of legal adoptions in India is only to the tune of 6000-7000 adoptions per year. Compared to many more children who are born and abandoned or orphaned in India, that is a miniscule number. A lot of adoptions or exchange of children happens either as illegal adoptions or as child-trafficking. 

Couples, after waiting for 1-2 years get referrals of up to 3 children, one at a time at an interval of roughly 60 days each. Upon receiving a referral, parents need to reserve a child. Usually, parents adopt the first child they reserve. Children up to the age of 2 years get maximum preference because it is believed that it is easiest at that age to adjust within the new family. The upper age limit of adoptive parents is 90 years (combined age) and minimum age for an adoptive parent is 30. Nishank tells us his magic logic that convinces couples in doubt about ‘bloodline’, ‘family lineage’ and such matters. He tells couples that both of them are not connected by blood but continue to make this family, so a child needn’t have the same blood as well! 

“The desire for social change is a big motivation for couples to go for adoption”, he concedes. “The rising inequality all around us motivates a lot of couples to give up on biological reproduction and instead opt for adopting a child who is abandoned or orphaned. Many celebrities have been known to adopt children as a social cause. The entire ecological debate on the planet’s future, the crisis of rising population and depleting resources also influence ‘thinking’ couples to offer a healing or a balancing touch to their surroundings”. But according to Nishank himself, these ‘romantic’ pursuits do not go too far. The single -most powerful logic of adoption is hidden within the idea of the ‘family’ itself – that a child ultimately ‘completes’ a family! 

Our conversation quickly shifts to alternative families. From the time regulatory mechanisms started applying to adoption in India, queer-parenting has either not been discussed or has been outrightly rejected. The same veneer of indecisiveness hangs over queer-parenting laws in India as it does in its laws to recognize LGBTQIA+ individuals and relationships. Practically speaking, after adoptions in India were brought within the ambit of Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act in 2015, single parents can now more freely adopt. This gives queer-families some scope to adopt children but only as a single-parent. The partner cannot have any legal rights over the child. These new changes in the law making way for single parents to adopt a child were vociferously challenged, primarily by Catholic agencies like Missionaries of Charity (of Mother Teresa fame) which declared that allowing single parents to adopt will give impetus to adoptions by gay and lesbian couples or divorced couples and it was against the moral codes of the institution and detrimental to a child who deserves parenting by ‘married’ couples only. 

Despite these protestations, the new laws came into effect and in fact single-parents, especially single-women were actively encouraged to adopt by the current regime. On the other hand, Missionaries of Charity was recently embroiled in a scandal that involved office bearers of their child care institutions selling children to couples illegally for money. The state of Jharkhand came down heavily upon the culprits and Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi ordered immediate inspection of adoption agencies all over India.

However, the excessive regulation and monitoring around adoptions in India has also heavily brought down the number of official adoptions that take place. But regulation is more than necessary given the sensitive nature of lives of children. The death by neglect or murder of 3 years old Shirin Mathews, an Indian born girl adopted by a couple in America in 2017 is a case that rocked inter-country adoptions. Holt International, a leading adoption agency shut its operations in India as they had facilitated the adoption. Mental health checks of adoptive parents were also deemed crucial since this incident. 

Table: Showing the decreasing number of adoptions in India. Source: CARA website

‘Project Sitara’ - a Study on Child Rehabilitation in India via Adoption conducted by students of Communication Studies Department (Batch of 2016) of Mount Carmel College Autonomous, Bangalore reveals multiple complexities that emerge after new regulatory mechanisms came into force in 2015. According to the report, the definition of ‘child(ren)’ in India itself remains ambiguous. However, the Juvenile Justice Act (under which adoptions come under) now defines child as a person who hasn’t completed 18 years of age. In India, the Child Welfare Committee is the authority over all child rights and child welfare matters. Juvenile Justice Act itself delineates two types of children – those in the need of care and protection and those in conflict with law. Apart from 0.5-3 million children abandoned or orphaned in India, there are also 1 million more who are in contact with the justice system or detained by law-enforcement officials for committing a crime or being suspected of committing so. 

On 15 January 2016, in a drastic move, the Ministry of Women and Child Development passed orders that children between 16-18 years of age who are in conflict with law can be tried as adults in cases of heinous offences. 

For children in the other category i.e. those in need of care or protection, not everyone qualifies for adoption. Government rules prohibit a child who has any living relative or family member from getting adopted by a family. Orphans or completely abandoned children with no living relatives are only provided with adoptive parents. Rest, go into institutions. The concept of foster-care is not so well developed in India which will enable a foster-family to care for a child who has living relatives but is in acute need for a certain period of time due to either poverty, disease in family or any other calamity. Confining such children to institutions reduces their chances of a more integrated life with the society. 

According to the report, the centralization of the adoption process with CARA gaining the sole authority of monitoring, regulating and conducting the adoption process will lead not only to streamlining but also to excessive control through overarching political policies of ruling government. The Project Sitara report points out the policy flaws right at the central level are sure to seep into multiple levels of the adoption practices in India. For instance, CARA’s 2015 policies are solely focused on quantitative aspects of adoption rather than more analytical approach that is needed. According to the report, “the system of adoption in India is for the purpose of parents to have a child, rather than a child to have a family”. The report also points out the cultural diversity of India around adoption practices that a universal law cannot address. Currently, a lot of informal adoptions or similar practices might be deemed illegal by the law. CARA uses words like ‘reserve’ and ‘released’ in relation to adoption of children as if children were ‘property or land plots’. The amendments to Juvenile Justice Act 2000 in 2015 also removed the clause of ‘social auditing’ which ensured qualitative checks on the lives of children post-adoption. This also exposes the non-participative nature of the laws made without extensive consultation processes.

CARA as a central agency has not only been accused of its non-participatory stance but has also come under fire for corruption. In 2011, the CBI investigated the Preet Mandir scam, an adoption agency that ran a huge adoption racket from Pune. J.K. Mittal, then chairperson of CARA was convicted for his involvement in this scam.  

While the new set of guidelines made in 2015 are based on a simple notion that digitalization means more transparency and efficiency, the lack of coordination between CARA and adoption agencies tells the opposite story. The report describes the legal changes as a “knee-jerk reaction”. Instead of dealing with corruption in agencies and other finer details that needed to be worked upon, activists think that CARA just brought in a completely new set of guidelines which was based on the government’s pre-occupation with ‘modern’ and ‘digital’. 

In this pre-occupation, the process has lost its human touch. Photographs of children are now e-mailed to prospective parents on the basis of which they have to make their first choice. This has been equated to ‘online shopping’ and criticized for taking away complete agency of the child when it comes to choosing parents. Another problem associated with ‘digitalization’ is mismatched expectations. It can be either be a peculiarity, or even skin colour that can be different from the photograph hence leading to complications at a later stage.

On the other hand, the government is steadily cutting down budget expenditure on children. While 40% of India is children, their share in our annual budget is less that 4%. While CARA has streamlined the process of adoption, the process prior to adoption i.e. of child recovery and rescue is fraught with gender insensitivity. Only a small number of girl children actually get recovered or rescued from abandonment or abuse than male children. As a result they are more likely to spend their lives in perpetual exploitation, devoid of even the most basic human rights.