The political one-upmanship between Women and Child Development minister Maneka Gandhi and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee over the Missionaries of Charity pulling out of the adoption process has overshadowed the unrest among parents and agencies trying to keep the “human touch” intact in what has now become an online process with virtually no interaction between parents, agencies and the child looking for a family.
He was at his mother’s funeral. The signal on his phone was weak. At some point during those two days, he received the SMS that his wife and he had been waiting for. It was from the Central Adoption and Resource Agency (CARA) asking them to log in and make their choice. By the time the couple got internet access, 48 hours had lapsed and with it their chance to be proud parents. Instead, in accordance with the new adoption guidelines that came into force on August 1, 2015, they were at the bottom of the list they had been on for a couple of years already.
As adoption goes online in India, promising transparency and a minimum waiting period of children in orphanages, the tech-centric process has alienated many and raised far more questions than the answers it claims to provide.
In the last two months, many parents have struggled to upload files, numerous phone calls to a toll free number have gone unanswered and there has been confusion and heartache. For an emotive issue like adoption, many feel the online process is just too impersonal.
Santosh D. Honkarape and Miss ABC are among those. Both haven’t met each other. Honkarape has only heard of the unwed mother who wants to give up her yet to be born baby for adoption. And Miss ABC only vaguely knows the details of the Pune-based gentleman. The two strangers have come together through their lawyer to challenge the new guidelines of the CARA in the Bombay High Court.
It’s barely been a month since the two moved court and two months since adoption in India went completely online. The tech-centric process has come in nearly two decades after some of the worst scandals involving babies being sold and tribal women being paid to have children who could then be put up for adoption by many unregulated agencies across the country were unearthed.
Both Honkarape and Miss ABC have only vaguely heard of the horror stories that were synonymous with adoption in India not so long back. But they are trying to understand the rationale behind the new guidelines. “It doesn’t add up,” Honkarape says firmly during a telephonic interview.
“In the process of saving a child from being sold, the guidelines have somehow managed to reduce the baby to a commodity. Prospective parents can now go online, click on one of the six options given to them and bring home a child.”
But the bigger concern for Honkarape, who already has two biological children, is that CARA expects couples who spend years trying to conceive to actually reject five babies and choose one. “The entire future of a baby and the home he or she will go to depends on one photograph that CARA will upload along with a bunch of documents on the child’s health status and basic background,” Miss ABC and Honkarape’s petition argues. “Nobody should be given the right to reject based on looks.”
But that is not yet a concern for a couple in Dadri, the epicenter of the beef ban agitations. This couple is struggling to get into the system that will give them a fair chance to adopt. For them, just ensuring that they are on the list has been a challenge. “They framed the guidelines, but forgot to check about internet penetration in the country or how well their employees can handle the switch,” says the wannabe mother.
“The staff that has to implement the guidelines is struggling to upload home study reports. In our case, we actually had to pick up the official and bring them home to finish the report. It was done in Hindi but could not be uploaded on the CARA website. It took months to ensure every document required had been uploaded. And now we are waiting, not sure where we stand on the list.”
And nobody has been able to answer their questions. The toll free helpline set up by CARA rarely provides answers.
Adoption agencies are now directing prospective parents to CARA. “But they just don’t pick up the phone,” says a parent in waiting. “We have no one to turn to for counseling. All we are expected to do now is track our case online and wait for six photographs to pop up on our screen.”
At the Karna Prayag Trust run orphanage in Chennai, director Sheela Jayanthi understands what the Dadri couple is going through. “Pre-adoption and post-adoption counseling have been the biggest casualties of the new system,” she says.
Also, many couples are simply not net savvy. And orphanages across the country are now helping couples register online.
None of these problems was unexpected. At a meeting in February, the managing committee of CARA, a number of agency representatives met officials from the Ministry of Women and Child development. The conference was a “grand failure”. A member of the committee who also attended the meet said that every concern raised was dismissed, every objection sidelined. At the end of it, agencies were categorically told that if they didn’t follow the new guidelines, they were free to shut down.
The Missionaries of Charity did just that earlier this month. They surrendered their licence and sought derecognition from CARA. Besides stating that the new guidelines that allow single parents to adopt “violate natural law and their religious views”, the Sisters also argued that allowing parents to choose a child was not right.
“Parents are not allowed a choice, even if the child has a deformity. We cannot allow parents one option out of six to adopt children,” Sister Amala of the Nirmala Shishu Bhawan, a New Delhi orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity, has been quoted as saying. “When a woman gives birth to a baby, is she allowed a choice? She gets what God gifts to her,” she stated.
“The decisions and the policy were drafted by ministry officials,” says Prabhat Kelkar, member of the CARA managing committee and secretary of Adharashram, a 61-year-old home for orphans and destitute women in Nashik, Maharashtra. “Even CARA did not have much of a say in it, though that is technically not their mandate. But the fact is that there were a lot of concerns raised, which now are being passed off as teething trouble.”
Kelkar believes that while the intention is honest, the process requires a serious rethink.
“Institutions have been failing children and malpractices have been there,” he agrees.
“The new guidelines have brought in transparency and are focused on ensuring children do not spend too much time in an orphanage. But in the bargain, they have made the process very complicated and put adoption out of reach of many families.”
On October 19, the Bombay High Court will listen to what Honkarape and Miss ABC have to say. Around the same time, the 61 member Maharashtra based Federation of Adoption Agencies will meet Menaka Gandhi in an attempt to “bring back the joy in adoption”.
The facts
Prior to 1982, there was no law governing adoption by foreigners in India
In May 1993, the Hague Convention envisaged the setting up of Central authorities. Subsequently CARA was established as the central authority to deal with inter-country adoptions in accordance with the provisions of the Hague Convention and ratified by the Government of India in2003.
The guidelines have been revised in 2006, 2011 and then in 2015
Timeline
48 hrsAfter viewing the photographs, child study report and medical examination report of the child or children, the prospective adoptive parents may reserve one child within a period of forty-eight hours for possible adoption and the rest of the children would be released through Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System for other prospective adoptive parents in the waiting list.
15 daysFor the process of matching to be completed from the date of “reserving” the child. In this time, parents and the adoption agency, which may be in another state, are expected to liaison. The agency has to assess the “suitability of the adoptive parents”, the parents can meet the child and get an independent medical examination done.
10 daysThe child has to be taken in pre-adoption foster care by the prospective parents within 10 days from the date of acceptance
In case, the prospective adoptive parents do not accept the reserved child or the specialised adoption agency does not find the prospective adoptive parents suitable, then, the prospective adoptive parents will be shifted to the bottom of the seniority list, as on that date, who can avail a fresh chance when the seniority becomes due and the same procedure shall be followed in the subsequent chances.
2 yrsValidity of the registration of prospective adoptive parents