Girls being preferred over boys for adoption: Panel

There is a general perception that people prefer to adopt boys over girls. But the figures of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (Cara) tell a different story. In 2015, as many as 3,100 girls had been adopted, which is 1,412 more than the number of boys who were adopted across the country. While 2,846 girls were adopted in 2013-14, the number of boys adopted during the same period stood at 1,631. Same was the case in 2011-2012 when 2,842 girls were adopted against 1,800 boys. Even the number of children with special needs has gone up this year. While 298 children with special needs were adopted so far this year, the figure stood at 217 in the previous year.

Despite delays and legal hurdles in the adoption system, the number of adoptions has been on the rise in the past few years. Figures suggest that the majority of the girls adopted in the past few years were up to the age of two.

Statistics show that more than 500 children with special needs were adopted by couples living in foreign countries. Though there is an increase in the number of couples making requests for adopting children with special needs, maximum such requests are pouring in from foreign countries. Statistics show while 500 children with special needs were adopted by people in foreign countries, the number of such adoptions in India was just about 100.

In the past it was the USA that used to adopt majority of the children from India. “Now Italy and Spain are at the top of the adoption chart,” a source told this newspaper. Cara secretary Deepak Kumar said, “Italian couples have been adopting children with special needs more than any other country. We have seen a drastic change in people’s outlook as more are preferring girls to boys. As per our forms, the gender bias has been moving out of the mindset of Indians.”

The officials in the ministry of women and child development explained that adoption of children in the country was a Herculean task. The entire process takes around six months to make any child legally free for adoption. After this, the responsibility rests with the CWC and the child enters into the central pool with the Cara. “With the whole system being online now and centralised, there are less chances of children not coming in the adoption stream. But the major hurdle is to make sure the abandoned children are registered and not trafficked,” said a senior ministry official.

“While the couples have their own specifications depending on their ethnicity and region they belong to, but the gender has not been the concern in the past few years,” said an official looking after the adoption services.

A Delhi based couple who adopted a girl from MP told this newspaper they always wanted a female child. “It took me more than a year to bring my baby girl home. I realised that the centralised process of adoption was very tedious but at the same time it was also fool proof. Despite the grim picture across the country of female child discrimination, we met many couples who wanted to adopt a baby girl.”

The agency was recently in the news for reported delays in the system which took a Canada based couple more than seven years to adopt a girl child from Punjab. After one makes a request for adoption of any child, it takes about a year or so to complete all the formalities. The officials explained that since most of the couples want to adopt children under two years of age, it gets imperative that they make the child legally free within six months after fulfilling all the formalities.

The Cara said the dipping numbers indicated that more children were coming into the system. “Our concern is to increase the pool of children to increase the adoptions, there are more than 9,000 institutes which are not even registered with the government. As per the child line survey, only 300 agencies are registered. Since the system has been made more transparent, these agencies have to be caught,” said Mr Kumar.