No official figure on ditched babies

ABANDONED! There is no punitive provision against adoption, which is clearly a case of criminal neglect.

J & K | Chhattisgarh | Delhi | MP |
Mizoram | Rajasthan

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

26/11: Terror comes precariously close

Featured Slideshows

New Delhi: If you ever visit an adoption home a baby's crib generally greets you at the entrance.

This is where desperate parents abandon their children to an uncertain life. All sorts of babies come here - illegitimate ones, ones with physical and mental disabilities and unwanted baby girls.

The one common trait though is that most are born into extreme poverty.

Says adoption consultant Laila Baig, "Most of the times it is financial constraints. The baby who has just been abandoned in Gurgaon, the parents must have realised that he is 1.5 kg in weight and has a very serious heart problem."

Surprisingly, there are no official figures as to how many babies are abandoned in the country. No ones seems to have cared enough to find out - not the Central Government and neither the states.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission though, says there are around 1.8 crore such babies - a figure the Central Adoption Resource Agency refutes.

But what cannot be refuted is the fact that thousands of babies are abandoned

every year.

In case a child is relinquished, parents are given two months to change their mind. It's only after that that the child is put up for adoption. But in case of an abandoned child the procedures are different.

Says CARA Chairman ,J K Mittal, "We should report this matter immediately to either the Child Welfare Committee or to the state department."

The irony is that though tens of thousand of children are abandoned in India every year, there aren't enough to go around as far as adoption is concerned. That's largely because the loopholes in the system make sure that most children don't even make it to adoption homes.

The result is that in Delhi alone, there are almost ,100 families waiting to adopt a child and annually only 3,500 children are adopted in the country.

To read IBNLive stories on mobile, log on to m.ibnlive.com on your mobile browser