Compassion, a matter of rights

Within a political climate of minority bashing, the request for derecognition of their adoption centres by the Missionaries of Charity (MoC), the religious institution founded by Mother Teresa, has acquired a political hue. The Union minister for women and child development (WCD), Maneka Gandhi, has accused the nuns of giving children in adoption only to Christian parents.

In the ensuing public debate, the recent guidelines issued by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), an autonomous body under WCD, are projected as secular and progressive. They entitle unmarried single persons to adopt as opposed to the policy of the MoC that married couples are prioritised over single persons.

An article, Be fair to the sisters by Derek O’Brien, Trinamul Congress MP, shed some light on the controversy. According to him the accusation by the minister that MoC has been giving children only to Christians is unfounded as he personally knows of several Hindu couples who have adopted children from MoC centres. Further, adoption forms only a small part of the activities of MoC. Their primary concern is to care for the infirm and the dispossessed, the aged, unwed mothers and abandoned children. To provide them human dignity has been its ethos. The services are offered free of charge to the needy across religious denominations.

However, it is an admitted position that married couples are prioritised over single persons while giving a child in adoption due to their belief that a married couple would be able to provide the child a stable home environment due to the anti-divorce dogma of the Roman Catholic Church and its anti-homosexual stand. This was not their only concern in asking for derecognition. They also had objections to the new procedure which permits the adoptive parents to select a child after scrutinising the profile of six children. They feel this would commodify children.

Thankfully, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the Bombay high court by a parent seeking to adopt and an unwed mother has helped shift the focus away from religious binaries and widened the debate.

The PIL has challenged the CARA guidelines on precisely the same points which were objected to by the MoC while opting for derecognition of their adoption centres.

The Federation of Adoption Agencies in Maharashtra, which is a party in the PIL, has also objected to the digitisation of the procedure on the ground that most people in our country do not have access to such technology. The MoC is a part of the federation in Maharashtra.

This will give an opportunity to the court to examine the objections raised by the MoC. The government has assured the court that it is willing to consider the objections and issue fresh guidelines. This is a step forward and will help to break the stalemate.

However, several other concerns need to be foregrounded while examining the issue of adoptions.

Despite the best efforts by government and voluntary agencies, the number of children being adopted through these adoption centres is negligible.

While there are 20 million destitute children in India, in 2014-15 just over 4,000 were adopted — 3,988 within India and 372 by parents abroad. According to CARA, this constitutes a mere 0.04 per cent of abandoned children in India through officially recognised agencies.

We also need to examine the context in which the autonomous body, CARA, was formed in the first place and the need for evolving a comprehensive scheme arose. The main concern was to curb adoption rackets, rampant at that time. There were instances of agencies luring poor parents to sell their infants, picking up abandoned babies, or kidnapping infants to sell them to foreigners. These raised an important issue for the Indian state, especially after courts expressed grave concern over it.

An important point to note is that the adoption centres of the MoC have never been under the scanner for such malpractices and were well respected for their dedicated work in this field.

The guidelines made it mandatory for Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to verify the whereabouts of each child before it is placed for adoption and put an end to all types of donations from prospective adoptive parents and foreign agencies. The ratio of in-country and inter-country adoption, which was 50:50 at that time, was to change to 80:20, as more Indian couples were encouraged to adopt. One is not aware of any comprehensive study as to how the 2011 guidelines changed the ecosystem of adoption in the country.

As per the 2011 CARA guidelines, a couple in a live-in relationship was not entitled to adopt. A couple had to be in a “stable” marriage for at least two years prior to adoption. A person below 25 years and beyond 50 years was not eligible to adopt a child under three years, and the aggregate age of parents could not be more than 90 years. For adopting a child above three years, the age bar was extended to 55 years and the aggregate age to 105 years. A single person was entitled to adopt, but the age bar was more constricted — between 30 and 45 years for adopting a child under three. A single male could not adopt a girl child. While gays and lesbians could not adopt as a couple, they were eligible as single persons. Whether any of these stipulations have been changed now is not clear.

It does appear that the MoC did not raise any objections to these guidelines at that time and seems to have abided by them. Hence, it is difficult to understand the present controversy except regarding the choice of six children and the digitised online procedure.

About the apprehension that single persons may be gays or lesbians, this has been a concern for all adoption centres, not just the MoC. But, gradually, there seems to be a change in approach, not just within society but also within the Roman Catholic Church, if the recent statements by Pope Francis and the more recent interview of Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai, are anything to go by. They have advocated a non-judgemental attitude towards people in same-sex relationships and an approach of love and compassion.

One would presume that “love and compassion” is not just “tolerance”, but is also a matter of “rights” which would include the right to adopt a child either as a single person or as a couple. There are winds of change blowing within the Church and the concern raised by nuns over single persons or those in same-sex relationships may not be able to provide a stable environment for the adopted child may now need to be reconsidered.

There is no guarantee that a married couple will provide a stable environment and that the couple may not get divorced either in a near or a distant future. There have been fierce custody battles among divorcing couples over adopted children, and at times, the courts have been on the verge of sending the child back to the adoption centre, a drastic step which may completely destabilise the child, but for lack of any other option.

So both the government as well as the MoC need to examine the issue from a more inclusive and non-judgemental perspective, keeping the best interest of the child at the centre of the discourse.

The writer is a women’s rights lawyer