Do you know this?

There are approximately 18000 parents registered with CARA, while the number of children in the Government's adoption pool is less 1800.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Thinking Indian

Today in the Hindu paper they have published a news article (planning commission recommending prevention and management of infertility in primary health care clinics) in which they have quoted the approximate percentage of married couples that are infertile. About 5 to 8% of married couples.

So what does that mean? India census in 2001 estimated the married couples to be around 230 million and if we do the math of above percentages, it comes to be around 1.1 to 18.4 millions. Highest number of orphans in India appears to be around 12 millions.

On supply-demand equation, it is logical to conclude that demand should outpace the supply but in India, only about 3000 adoptions takes place each year. You have heard this argument before that then why doesn't adoptions in India increase?

If you want to understand this, then you need to understand the difference between two terms namely "Orphan" and "Adoption eligible orphan". Orphan is a child that technically has no parents but not necessarily eligible for adoption because he/ she may have an extended family that didn't/ doesn't consent for adoption but also cannot care for the child where as the eligible orphan has a consent to find an alternative home through adoption.

I can see your mind coming up with all these questions like when the extended family cannot care for the child why don't they consent? I truly don't know but I can give you a scenario to understand. Let's say there's a child whose parents are succumbed to HIV and growing up with grandparents. Grand father is an alcoholic and the grand mother is uneducated and physically not very strong. Grand mother loves the child so dearly that she doesn't want to let go but at the same time cannot work hard enough to feed her. What should she do? It's a tough call. I personally think grand mother needs to be given an opportunity to earn more so that she can keep the child and care for her. But I also know that there might come a day when the grand mother is no more, what happens to this child?
I want to leave you with all these questions today. Think hard and long. Think everyday and I can promise you that you'll start coming up with solutions. India needs people like you who thinks. Who knows, your solution might be the idea to fix a problem like the one we were discussing above.

1 comment:

Sumanta said...

Even i was also surprised by tha fact that number of adoption cases in a yaer in India is only 3000 (i.e. around 10 per day). I tried to find out the reason behind this and it seems the maximum number of adoption requests are for infants (i.e. children below 1 year). Also number of infants available for adoption is extremely low in proportion to the total number of available children for adoption.

Coming to the grandmother case, here are few solutions that could be worked out:
1. Allow foster parenting concept legally in India. This way the child gets an extended family who can take good care of and at the same time grandmother also gets to own her grandchild.
2. get the grandmother involved in the orphanage eco-system as a caregiver. I'm sure most of the orphanages are short of enough caregivers. This way grandmother can support her family better and also becomes aware of the adoption concept.